Welcome to Litsy!

A real dog, named Patron, is the most famous animal in Ukraine... he helps Ukrainian sappers find Russian landmines.... Ukrainian children all know his story, love him and want to have their own fluffy version of this canine hero. Children also follow Patron on Instagram (at ua.patron), where he teaches children how to take care of themselves should they chance upon any explosive objects.

In Berehove on the Hungarian border, Alena, and her new refugee friends attend Hungarian language courses. Each lesson lasts three hours and those who have signed up for the course take it as seriously as if they were preparing for an exam.
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Alena has a favourite phrase in Hungarian: Jó reggelt kivanok! - "Good morning!" This sounds a little funny to Ukrainians because it reminds us of the Ukrainian words for "hedgehog under the sofa".

I do know that bees have also been its victims, along with books, as well as books about bees, such as my latest novel. You cannot buy it in Ukraine now.... the publishers cannot reprint it and bookshops as such no longer exist. In Mariupol and cities in other cities in the south and east they were destroyed along with the books; in cities elsewhere in Ukraine, they simply shut down as a result of the war.

All the Ukrainians who have left their homes will wait for the moment when it will be safe to return. Just as I am waiting.

I am waiting for the opportunity not just to return to a peaceful Kyiv but to return to my library, to my desk, to the archives was using to write my latest novel, to my plans for the future, to the world that I have been creating around me for decades, a world that made me happy.

In recent weeks, many Ukrainians have become military experts. Me too. I already know that an advancing army loses manpower in the ratio of 10 to 1. That is, the losses of those defending territory are one tenth that of those who are advancing.

On my short street..... using money from the city budget, a small, cosy, public garden across the street from our house was turned into a cool-not to say cold concrete-clad memorial park named after Pavel Sheremet. Pavel Sheremet was a Belarusian journalist who fled from Moscow to Ukraine and lived in a nearby street until he was killed on July 20, 2016 on the street where he lived. They simply attached a bomb to the underside of his car.