Nervous and demoralized, she asked, “What am I doing wrong?”

“You’re ignoring everything I’m teaching!” the instructor snapped, clearly exasperated. “Did you divide the face you’re drawing into equal thirds for eyes, nose and mouth? No? And where are the horizontal and vertical lines you need to build symmetry?”

Now Taty felt even worse. “I don’t feel the portrait if I do it your way,” she complained. “I need to start with the person’s eyes. I need to feel I’m with the person, looking into their soul.”

The instructor turned out to be a kinder man than Taty initially thought. “OK, make a drawing of me, and do it your way,” he said. “If I like what you do, I won’t ask you to change.”

To everyone’s surprise, including his own, he loved the results. Taty earned her expressive style, and even now, she still starts her portraits by painting her subject’s eyes. She has come a long way since those days in her native Ukraine. She’s learned a great deal in the United States and honed her artistic skills over decades of work.

But traveling to the US was not an easy decision. It took aggravations great and small to make her family depart for the Western world.

Leaving Soviet censorship and antisemitism

Taty’s parents had both done well under the Soviet regime that prevailed in Ukraine in the 1960s and ‘70s. Taty’s mother was no mere doctor in the Russian Army — she was an esteemed surgeon. Her father, an engineer, was in high demand for his ability to solve the government’s complicated engineering problems.

But life was far from perfect for the young artist and her family. A small but real annoyance for Taty was censorship. The Soviets censored all Impressionist art. She wasn’t allowed to view it on the grounds that it was anti-socialist.

Antisemitism was a bigger factor in their decision to emigrate. The treatment of Jews in Soviet Ukraine was terribly prejudiced. Taty was born to a Ukrainian mother and Jewish father; to avoid the fierce racism, her parents gave her her mother’s surname, Horoshko, at birth instead of her father’s German-Jewish surname, Bronzaft.

As the family kept their Jewish heritage concealed, attending synagogue was out of the question. A particularly noxious result of Soviet antisemitism is that Taty’s parents feared she might inadvertently reveal their Jewish roots. For security, they raised her to believe she was Egyptian.

Taty recalls one painful moment from her school days. A teacher approached her best friend, a pure-blooded Ukrainian, and told her to disassociate with Taty. “Her family can be a potential traitor to the Soviets,” the teacher reasoned. Additionally, other school children would regularly search for Jewish surnames in the class journal and mark them as targets to bully.

Starting a new life in the US

The decision to leave Ukraine was a difficult one. Taty’s parents knew that if they became émigrés — people who emigrate, often for political reasons — they’d lose their homeland and all their possessions. They would be forced to start over with no more than $300 cash. But ultimately, they knew they had to move. Taty and her family became political refugees when she was 15, and sought a fresh start in the US.

When they reached US shores, young Taty was astonished by the kindness they encountered. They spent their first year in the state of Michigan, where both parents quickly found jobs. When they arrived in the city of Flint, Jewish refugee supporters rented an apartment for them. They provided the family with not just furniture, but sheets, towels and decorative paintings. Taty had never experienced such generosity from strangers.

The following year, they moved to New York, where they still live. Taty was quickly accepted at the Parsons School of Design. This bolstered her love of painting and got her more experience than she had in her Ukrainian academy.

Taty’s powerful art supports veterans

Now in her 60s, Taty has made a personal discovery. “In the last few years, my art has a new purpose,” she says. “Always before, I thought that being a philanthropist meant you had to be super wealthy. But now I’ve learned that my voice through art can be louder than just money.”  

Taty co-founded Portrait of Freedom, Inc. This organization supports veterans, first responders and their families through art. She often donates as much as half of the proceeds from her sales.

With war raging in Ukraine, her old home is part of her life once more. Moved by the sacrifice of Ethan Hunger Hertweck, a US soldier who gave his life fighting for Ukraine’s freedom from Russia, Taty created a new portrait. “I painted his portrait because I wanted to show that he wasn’t just a statistic, that this is a real person who gave his life for what he believed in,” she stated.

Taty painted the portrait as a gift to Hertweck’s family. She worked rapidly, completing it in one 24-hour period. “I stood at my easel, looking at photographs of Ethan. I stared at his eyes and then I used my iPad to take close-up photos of his eyes,” she commented. “These zoomed-in photos on my iPad are far bigger than in the original photo. I look at the enlarged photos and I see a window to his soul.”

Taty’s art has an incredible effect on its beholders. “I sent a picture of the portrait to [Ethan’s] mother, and as we were texting back and forth, we realized we were both crying,” she said.

Her portraits are so much more than paint on canvas. She captures the essence of her subjects, starting with their eyes and metaphorically connecting with their souls. Her art is a powerful voice for freedom and humanity.
[Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post This Ukrainian Artist Makes Surprisingly Powerful Art Starting With Eyes appeared first on Fair Observer.

Pavel’s mother, Anna Shevchenko, is a different case. She now has to deal with the fact that her son is a blind man with a prosthetic leg. Compounding her grief, she’s also recently lost another close family member. However, she’s been so caught up in helping with her son’s rehab that she barely has time to process the second loss. This makes the trauma complex and difficult to heal.

Anna isn’t doing well. She needed the help of Svitlana Kutsenko, a clinical psychologist. Kutsenko works at Super Humans, the most advanced prosthetics hospital in Ukraine. She provides treatment to the essential but little-discussed population of patients with psychological trauma.

Psychological trauma of the sort that Anna is dealing with comes about when a person witnesses or experiences extremely stressful, disturbing or traumatic events. People who have psychological trauma may have symptoms such as intense feelings of sadness, despair, anger, guilt or fatigue. They may have nightmares, flashbacks or difficulty concentrating.

Tragically, Russia’s war on Ukraine has caused uncountable new instances of psychological trauma.

How does a clinical psychologist help victims of psychological trauma?

To see the kind of help a clinical psychologist like Kutsenko can provide, let’s look at how she’s helping Anna.

“When I have a new patient,” Kutsenko told me, “often the symptoms that I hear might begin with, ‘Help me, I can’t sleep,’ or, ‘I can’t communicate with other people because I get angry too easily.’”

A session might start with these kinds of symptoms, but soon enough she and her patient get into much more complex issues, ones that are closer to a person’s identity, such as, “Why is this happening? Why did they do this to me?”

To Kusenko, these latter kinds of questions are often the ones that matter most. “People get suicidal when their lives don’t have meaning. We find that suicidal thoughts come because of questions of meaning, not because the individual is more anxious than usual.”

Anna is feeling powerless and in despair. “Sometimes the best I can do for her,” acknowledges Kusenko, “is say to her, ‘What you’re going through is a nightmare. You have the right to be in the mental state you’re in right now. What you’re feeling is a normal reaction to totally abnormal circumstances. No human being should have to face this kind of challenge.’”

Kutsenko can’t make the mother’s pain go away, but she can listen to her, be there for her and validate what she’s feeling. She can also rejoice with her when Pavel passes a milestone in his healing, such as being able to take his first steps with his prosthetic leg.

Kutsenko’s goal is not only to help mitigate Anna’s immediate pain, but also to help her move to a place where the scars will not control her life. Kutsenko knows that Pavel’s resilience in the face of his severe injuries is heroic, yet it is Anna who embodies the silent, enduring agony of a caregiver who must witness her child’s suffering daily.

Anna’s battles are fought in the shadows of her son’s visible scars. Both Pavel and Anna bear immense burdens, but it is perhaps the unseen wounds of those like Anna, who grapple with the relentless echoes of trauma and loss, that linger longest.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post In Ukraine, Wounded Soldiers’ Families Suffer Just as Much appeared first on Fair Observer.

“The clear objective is to undermine a sense of stability and safety,” Pankov told me. “They want to make people feel scared and that their government can’t protect them. They never stop or slow down. It’s a constant flow of attacks.”

Most of us know about Russia using rockets to destroy targets like schools, hospitals and power plants. But the destruction Pankov is up against is just as harmful, yet also invisible. Pankov from the Kyiv Region Cyber Police is a digital warrior.

“They are using the digital battlefield to go after all aspects of online life, like mobile phones, banks, commerce, email, and internet service providers,” he told me. “They create denial of service so that no one can conduct commerce, and they attack anything related to data processing.”

The targets

Here’s how a particularly nasty Russian technique works, according to Pankov.

“We were able to destroy a bot farm in the Kyiv Region, funded and operated by the Russians,” he told me. “One of their specialties was creating fake bomb threats. They developed fake accounts involving schools and shopping centers or government institutions. A Russian expert sitting in Russia would instruct a local agent in Kyiv Region to create fake internet accounts, and then their fun begins. They spread fake bomb threat alerts.”

“Say it’s to a school, although it could be any institution they attack,” he told me. “The principal at the school gets a credible bomb threat, apparently coming from someone in Kyiv. The principal has to evacuate the building, and the students and staff can’t come back in until my sniffing dogs come to make sure the building is clean. It’s a total disruption of whatever the kids were studying.”

Pankov said the Russians do this systematically. “The economic and psychological impact is huge and it’s happening every day,” he adds.

The mechanics of a bot farm

A bot farm is a collection of automated programs (bots) that create fake media interactions, usually for malicious purposes. They enable many cyber attacks.

“During 2023 we disabled more than ten large-scale bot farms,” Pankov told me. “A bot farm can generate 500 new fake accounts in a day. The longer the bot farm exists, the more fake accounts it can use for malicious purposes. A bot farm can have a profound impact on the social space. In a month, a single bot farm can create 15,000 fake accounts.”

In his experience, the bot farms have three aspects.

1. Promoting Russian ideology

2. Spreading disinformation about political leaders or their decisions. The bot farmers’ goal is to undermine the public’s support for the government.

3. Undermining confidence in the military, suggesting that, for instance, many more Ukrainians are dying than Russians, or that the West doesn’t care about Ukraine.

For example, to spread malevolent disinformation, a bot farmer may post information from one account to a group that follows military affairs. Then fake people from other fake accounts from the same bot farm will comment on the story, endorse it and repost it to other groups. The scale of this can be so massive that people feel it must be real.

Asked to comment on whether this is happening in the West, Pankov answers, “I cannot comment on this officially, but from public sources, I see that the same pattern exists in the West. Bad actors inject fake information, and the goal is dividing people and making people not trust each other or their government.”

Mitigation

Pankov loves his job because he gets to fulfill the oath he took as a police officer: to protect and serve. “When we are investigating cybercrime and bringing the perpetrator to justice or even when we can prevent cybercrime from happening. I know, I am protecting and serving,” he said.

While traditional warfare garners headlines, the insidious nature of digital attacks poses an equally grave threat. As the Russia–Ukraine war rages on, it’s a reminder that the frontlines of modern warfare extend far beyond the physical realm. Ukraine is safer because of digital warriors like Lieutenant Colonel Pankov.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Russia’s Unusual New Method of Attack: Fake Bomb Threats appeared first on Fair Observer.

When Russia invaded Ukraine two years ago, Zelensky refused the American offer to helicopter him to safety (“I need ammunition, not a ride,”) and in doing so, galvanized Ukraine and the world. Without Zelensky’s inspirational courage and flair, Ukraine could have been overrun, its culture destroyed and its people no longer free.

From TV star to head of state

Zelensky’s ascent from actor to President of Ukraine began when he starred in the TV series, Servant of the People. The wildly popular series began in 2015 and aired for three years. Even today you can find online reviews of it that say, as a certain Derping Flamingo said, “This is the best show ever. I died laughing and now I’m a ghost!” Or AllanHy who says, “This series is so hilarious, unpredictable, and well done that it needs to be seen by EVERYONE.”

The plot is an idealistic schoolteacher becomes president of Ukraine and works to combat corruption. The background of the show is, in 2014, after Ukrainians forced a corrupt Putin-puppet president to flee the country, people saw the possibility of a rebirth of freedom and prosperity.

The head of the Ukrainian TV network 1+1 was swept along in this enthusiasm and he asked screenwriters to come up with a series based on the idea of, “A new government is coming to this country.”

Thinking back on this time, Dmytro Hryhorenko, one of the show’s writers, remembers: “We started with a clean slate, imagining the perfect picture: a simple person, untouched by politics, becomes president overnight. The show would offer a satirical yet hopeful vision of a Ukraine free from corruption and oligarchy.”

Although Zelensky played the fictional president, Hryhorenko points out, “Zelensky was more than just an actor. It was his production company, and each of the company’s shows was personally edited by him.”

Servant of the People turned out to be wildly popular in Ukraine. It was more than just entertainment; it was a reflection of a nation’s yearning for change. By the second season, Hryhorenko and his fellow screenwriters learned that their viewers were imagining that the man who played the fictional president might become the real president. 

Hryhorenko says that it was at this point that Zelensky began thinking seriously about going into politics for real. Hryhorenko remembers talking with him in the actors’ van. “We could watch him struggle with the fear of such a task,” Hryhorenko recalls. “We got to witness how Zelensky gained determination from one shooting scene to another.”

An anti-corruption candidate

Zelensky may have been awed by the seriousness of what he was contemplating, but Hryhorenko knew that Zelensky knew that if he didn’t run for president, there was no other candidate who would be as well-positioned and as well-motivated to fight corruption. 

Ukrainians had good reason to want to attack corruption. A Ukrainian social worker told me, “The worst legacy of the Soviets was you couldn’t get anything done without a bribe. Your kid doesn’t get into a good school, you don’t get a good job, you aren’t seen by the right doctor, your legal case doesn’t go the way you want, everything depended on bribes.”

And further, the corrupt oligarchs were siphoning off the people’s wealth to pay for their yachts and their villas in France. This kind of theft was keeping the country poor. 

In this context, Zelensky and his scriptwriters knew that fighting corruption needed to be the focus of the series. “We laid out the dramatic twists and complications that faced the President in the show,” says Hryhorenko, “but all of these were solved in 25 minutes and evil was punished. In real life, the battle is not between good and evil. It’s between terrible and bad. Reforms cannot change the country overnight. But they can help take another step from a bad reality to a slightly better one.”

Inspired by Servant of the People, Ukrainians began to demand a new and better kind of leader, one who could take on corruption. The culmination of this came when Zelensky ran for office in 2019. He won with 73% of the vote.

“At its best,” says Hryhorenko, “good art gives the impulse to change reality.” 

Hryhorenko and his colleagues did change reality. Without them, Zelensky would almost certainly not be Ukraine’s President today. And without Zelensky, Ukrainian people might today be under Putin’s Mafia-style thumb, and Putin himself might be invading still more countries. The Servant of the People script writers changed history.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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