Stas Olenchenko 🇺🇦

If this is not terrorism then I don’t know what is

Okay, I feel like I’m really done with that other place. Trash beyond repair.

I’m pretty sure though that I don’t follow all the people who migrated here from X and whom I was following there. (Or maybe someone new?)

If that’s you, say hi in the replies and I’ll follow you back!

If there’s just one Ukraine-related article that I could make every person in Europe read in 2025, this has to be Maksym Butkevych’s interview:

www.zeit.de/politik/ausl...

This post of mine is getting tonnes of support back on X, but I’m not sure if it’s because of Ukraine activism or Hugh Grant.

Something's changing on the maps of Europe For the first time in my life, Ukraine is seen on many political maps of Europe. This hasn't been the case before.

For better or worse, Ukraine is not a quiet borderland of Europe anymore. We’re a frontier now – and frontiers don’t get omitted from the maps.
10/10

Full essay is in my newsletter: open.substack.com/pub/stasolen...

Ukraine stood up, resisted and turned itself into the shield of modern Europe.

In 2024, abandoning Ukraine would mark the death of Europe – politically, economically and ideologically. More and more people are finally realizing this.
9/

I do feel pleased and relieved about this change. The unfairly ignored Ukrainian kid in me finally feels seen.

But then I remind myself that the price paid for this recognition is human blood.
8/

I don’t have any hard data to support my observations. It’s something that I just see. Or rather, something that I can’t unsee.

After 20 years of noticing Ukraine’s absence on so many maps of Europe, I have a sharp eye for that. I trust my radar.
7/

I’m talking about the political maps that communicate a much subtler concept of Europe.

These maps represent Europe as a shared idea that happens to have real geographical borders. And Ukraine is there.
6/

And, for the first time in my life, I think Ukraine is succeeding at that.
I’m seeing more and more maps of Europe that include Ukraine.

Not the geography maps – those have always existed in a static form and included Ukraine along with the European part of Russia.
5/

Being a borderland is a tough and ungrateful fate. People keep forgetting you exist.

So since 1991, it has been a continuous struggle for Ukrainians to carve a place for our country on the modern map of Europe – both on physical maps and in the minds of fellow Europeans.
4/

Borders mean much more to the people who inhabit them, and Ukrainians are one of Europe’s key border folk.

We have always been, as Serhiy Plokhy put it, “the gates of Europe”: from the spread of Indo-Europeans to the Mongolian invasion and to modern Russian aggression.
3/

Ukraine’s absence always communicated a bitter sense of invisibility. Here I was, sitting in Kyiv, a capital of a dynamic democracy bordering four EU countries.

And yet, apparently, I was not in Europe. Together with my forty million compatriots, I was stuck in a non-place.
2/

Something’s changing on the maps of Europe right now.

It’s subtle change that only a trained eye can see.

But as a Ukrainian, I never had the privilege of not noticing what the map of Europe looked like in every book or movie. Because on too many of those maps, Ukraine wasn’t included.
1/

many Western 'decolonization' events won't take security and guest vetting seriously. i'm regularly forced to decline some invites because the organizers put zero effort into making the space physically safe while russian spies hunt people down abroad. this ain't a game. wake up

For some reason saying out loud that Europe is currently under attack makes you sound like a right-wing conspiracy person, which is a problem considering that Europe is actually being attacked in multiple ways by Russia and our societies deserve an honest conversation about it.

Exactly, this is a typical colonial/invader mindset that Russia never grew out from.

Vladimir Putin to reject Donald Trump’s opening peace offer, says Russian tycoon Konstantin Malofeyev says Russian president to engage in talks only if they include broader conflicts

Source:
www.ft.com/content/ac39...

So much of “mysterious Russian soul” is about the desperate need to be treated like the big boys and sit at the table with the US while knowing deep down that they don’t have anything but nukes to be a global superpower.

So Russians bully and invade to get attention and respect of the big guys.

То що тепер, підтримувати Ассада? За «стабільність і добробут»?

Ви зараз говорите так само як вестерни говорили про азов у 2014-15 році.

Нагадаю, що ми говоримо про спротив режиму, який вбивав тисячі цивільних хімічною зброєю.

I honestly don’t know a better human adequacy test than asking a person about their stance on the Russia-Ukraine war.

Idiots always out themselves with uninformed contrarian fallacies.

Smart people always shine with empathy and intellectual clarity.

Опозиція ніколи ніде не є ідеальною, тому не бачу сенсу сперечатися про це.

Головне, що ситуація змінюється і застій зрушився. Як це закінчиться— ніхто не знає.

I can’t fully express the sense of hope and solidarity that I feel as a Ukrainian watching the unfolding events in Syria and Georgia right now.

The axis of tyrants is cracking, and our nations share the frontline of its war against the democracy.

A very clear summary of Biden’s handling of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Spoiler: it’s a self-imposed disaster.

The map that shows Russia’s ‘secret war’ with the West has now begun Bomb scares in London, a plane crash in Lithuania: they all form part of a web of suspected acts of sabotage, and may be just the beginning

Here the UK’s Telegraph, unpaywalled, provides yet another survey of Russian sabotage operations across Europe for those that really haven’t been paying attention. (Including some lightly scrambled quotes from yours truly.)

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11...

Bashar al-Assad, Ayatollah Khameini, Vladimir Putin, your boys just took one hell of a beating.

I couldn’t make it but thank you for coming!

I believe Berlin needs to hear your thoughts more than any other place in Europe.

My opinion is that Syria was the point where modern world order began to collapse.

A bloody tyrant used chemical weapons against civilians and invited foreign armies to terrorize his people — and the world just let it happen.

If Syria is free one day, maybe the world has a chance.