The United Kingdom has been a leader in rallying world support for Ukraine, and we expect that to remain the same under a Labour government. Although Keir Starmer was elected as Labour Party leader under a non-interventionist platform, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine has shifted U.K. politics. There is near-unanimity across the parties on the appropriateness of backing Ukraine. At the start of the full-scale invasion, then-U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson faced numerous scandals and critici

Editor’s Note: This article was published by the twice-weekly newsletter “The Counteroffensive with Tim Mak” on May 12, 2024, and has been re-published by the Kyiv Independent with permission. To subscribe to "The Counteroffensive," click here. Prisoner negotiations between Ukraine and Russia are one of the many things obscured by the fog of war. Even the wives of prisoners of war (POWs) don't find out their husbands are being freed until they are on Ukrainian soil. One woman attended these pr

Editor’s Note: This article was published by the twice-weekly newsletter “The Counteroffensive with Tim Mak” on April 14, 2024, and has been re-published by the Kyiv Independent with permission. To subscribe to "The Counteroffensive," click here. In a country at war, death is all around. But Pavel Goldin is focused on a particular kind of collateral damage: an aquatic mammal he's spent much of his life studying. “Please report all known finds of dead dolphins!” reads a recurring post on a Face

Editor’s Note: This article was published by the blog “The Counteroffensive with Tim Mak” on March 17, 2024, and has been re-published by the Kyiv Independent with permission. To subscribe to "The Counteroffensive," click here. There’s a low rumbling that never quite stops below Kharkiv’s iconic Independence Square. This morning, the sound is a metro train thundering into Universytet Station, just underneath the school children learning the basics of the four seasons and the seven days of the w

Editor’s Note: This article was published by the blog “The Counteroffensive with Tim Mak” on March 14, 2024, and has been re-published by the Kyiv Independent with permission. To subscribe to "The Counteroffensive," click here. Dilaver Saidakhmetov's grandfather wasn’t a practicing Muslim, but that didn’t stop him building a mosque. After decades of Soviet authorities burning Islamic literature and shutting down Islamic schools, Crimean Tatars were deported in the hundreds of thousands to Cent