Larisa Kalik was born and raised in Transnistria. After publishing a book based on interviews with Transnistrian army conscripts, she was forced to flee the region due to safety concerns and relocated to Ukraine. Her Ukrainian roots have played a significant role in shaping her identity, both personally and professionally. As a journalist and writer, she has covered Russia’s war against Ukraine, working on the front lines to document the conflict through photography and written reports. Kate Tsurkan is a reporter at The Kyiv Independent, co-founder of the magazine Apofenie, author of the newsletter Explaining Ukraine, and co-translator of Oleh Sentsov’s Diary of a Hunger Striker (Deep Vellum 2024). Her writing and translations have appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Harpers, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. Francis Farrell is a reporter at The Kyiv Independent, co-author of the newsletter War Notes, and recipient of a Charles Douglas-Home Memorial Trust grant. He previously worked as a managing editor for the online media project Lossi 36, freelance journalist, and documentary photographer, as well as in OSCE and Council of Europe field missions in Albania and Ukraine Andreas Umland, M.Phil. (Oxford), Dr.Phil. (FU Berlin), Ph.D. (Cambridge), Research Fellow at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs in Stockholm, Senior Expert at the Ukrainian Institute for the Future in Kyiv, and Associate Professor at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.

Larisa Kalik was born and raised in Transnistria. After publishing a book based on interviews with Transnistrian army conscripts, she was forced to flee the region due to safety concerns and relocated to Ukraine. Her Ukrainian roots have played a significant role in shaping her identity, both personally and professionally. As a journalist and writer, she has covered Russia’s war against Ukraine, working on the front lines to document the conflict through photography and written reports. Kate Tsurkan is a reporter at The Kyiv Independent, co-founder of the magazine Apofenie, author of the newsletter Explaining Ukraine, and co-translator of Oleh Sentsov’s Diary of a Hunger Striker (Deep Vellum 2024). Her writing and translations have appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Harpers, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. Francis Farrell is a reporter at The Kyiv Independent, co-author of the newsletter War Notes, and recipient of a Charles Douglas-Home Memorial Trust grant. He previously worked as a managing editor for the online media project Lossi 36, freelance journalist, and documentary photographer, as well as in OSCE and Council of Europe field missions in Albania and Ukraine Andreas Umland, M.Phil. (Oxford), Dr.Phil. (FU Berlin), Ph.D. (Cambridge), Research Fellow at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs in Stockholm, Senior Expert at the Ukrainian Institute for the Future in Kyiv, and Associate Professor at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.