Ukraine is fighting for its very existence, against an enemy that repeatedly claims it is not a real country, that it has no identity and culture as distinct from Russian culture, and that Ukrainian is not an independent language. Equally on the far left and extreme right in the West, there are some who see Ukraine as a tool of Western foreign policy. But Ukrainians have agency, and the right to determine their future, the evolution of their political system and which alliances they want to entertain. Today we are exploring the cultural aspects of this David and Goliath struggle of a young democracy versus an old autocracy.
Tetyana Denford is a Ukrainian-American fiction author, translator for Frontline PBS, freelance writer as well as YouTube channel host with a 20+ year history of working in the writing and editing world. Her first novel, self-published in 2020 as ‘Motherland’ has been re-published in July 2022 with the team at Hachette/Bookouture as ‘The Child of Ukraine’. It reached #1 on the Amazon New Release list. Tetyana used to write freelance for Elle and Vogue, and has been featured in The New York Times, The Telegraph, The Paris Review, Flock Magazine, and Medium.
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