Author Archive

05Feb

05.02.2026 / January

Larissa Babij
Feb 5


In luxurious Lviv, where I’ve been since Sunday morning, I’ve only experienced one power outage. It lasted 2.5 hours.Read more →

09Dec

08.12.2025 / Surreal (state of mind) — Part 2


DEC 08, 2025
When you’ve been the target of murder every day and every night for the past nearly four years you don’t just suddenly drop the habitual expectation of violent attack. Even after crossing the ocean, your state of mind, body, and nervous system preserve patterns you’ve developed to survive and function.

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09Dec

06.12.2025 / Surreal (state of mind) — Part 1

I do like a controlled fire. New England, late November 2025.


DEC 06, 2025
Hello from the American suburbs. There is something comfortable and nourishing about being with your people. There are so many different ways to define who “your people” are, but the people you come from will always be the people you come from. Even if you’ve left. Maybe even more so. Coming back is also about replenishing something vital

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30Oct

30.10.2025 / Home


Irpin, memorial at the destroyed Romaniv bridge, May 2025. Hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated under russian fire from russian-occupied areas of the Kyiv region via this “Road of Life” in March 2022.
OCT 30, 2025

I am writing from Poland, where I’ve spent the past week visiting friends. Yes, this was a planned trip to escape the cold, darkness, and russian airstrikes that have come to characterize autumn in Kyiv. Only these are not normal conditions for living.

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15Oct

15.10.2025 / Escape artist

OCT 15, 2025

Scene One

October, a Kyiv metro train. All the seats are full. I am reading Valeriy Puzik’s Myslyvtsi za shchastiam (Hunting for happiness) — a collection of sketches from his military service in parts of Ukraine deoccupied from russian forces. To my left is a woman, middle-aged, neatly dyed hair, with a bag on her lap, looking at her phone. To my right — a man around 40, salt-and-pepper hair, buzz cut, good-looking. The smell of alcohol hangs in the air.

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07Jul

12.07.2025 / Independence or Indecision

12.07.2025 / Independence or indecision by Larissa Babij 


This 4th of July Claire Berlinski produced a piece of conceptual art by publishing the full text of the Declaration of Independence (with no additional comment). Eloquent, courageous, the declaration speaks for itself: a performative gesture that transformed a line of thought, stretching back to Aristotle, into action so potent that the nation it birthed lived a long, prosperous life of nearly 250 years.Read more →

27May

26.05.2025 / This Is War

26.05.2025 / This Is War by Larissa Babij


Thank you, friends, for writing to check in these past few days. It’s good to be reminded that you care. You’ve also helped me see that I should be the one to speak first if I don’t want Russia to speak for me. Read more →

14Mar

08.03.2025 / Consistency

08.03.2025 / Consistency by Larissa Babij

This moment is no less alarming than February and March 2022. In fact it is much more terrifying. For you don’t hear explosions outside your window. I do, of course, even as I write this, but they don’t elicit the same bodily response, they’ve become familiar.

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23Feb

23.02.2025 / As Long As It Takes

23.02.2025 / As long as it takes by Larissa Babij.


I came back to Kyiv on February 12. After a month abroad, the first thing I noticed was how dirty the air was. Overnight russia had attacked Ukraine with 123 Shahed drones + 6 ballistic missiles. Missile fragments had fallen in several Kyiv neighborhoods and killed a person. Read more →

08Aug

Coda

Perfection is:

A fine-wrought phrase

A caress of light and shadow

on a Sensuous Smile

A ridge of peaks

gilded by the Sun

A desert vista

painted by the Moon

An idea

that pierces convention

A melody

that charms the chalice of the Soul

A face

that illuminates your heart.

.

© Kazkar Babiy MCMLXXXIV Venice

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