Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 22hKharkiv capybaras survived the night. High five, babes. 130
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 22hWant to be my usual self, but I don’t feel like a human today. The russians were bombing us half night. Houses in my friends’ hood were hit again and again, a bank was also deemed a strategic object. These strikes are aimed to dehumanize us, show how expendable we are. 1167
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 13/05/2026Metalwork on the stairs of the national scientific and technical archive in Ukraine. 0141
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 08/05/2026Grandpa Viktor chose his identity, like he chose to love red tulips and to brush off his WW2 service as practical and not something that he really felt was the right thing to do. 4/4 071
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 08/05/2026My grandpa Viktor was very young when WW2 began. He had several birthdays because he added a year to join the red army in 1943 (provision was much better and he could send his relatives some food, he would say). He was a paramedic and I think he didn’t see much of the fighting, or 1/4 182
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 07/05/2026Library copies of my PhD submitted 🥳🥹. I still need to wait for all the checks, but, fingers crossed, the uni gods confirm. “Apocalyptic Unlearning: Vulnerable Legacies and Cultural Reimaginings in Wartime Kharkiv (2022-24)” will fly into the big world of grownup PhDs✈️. 0120
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 22/04/2026The beautiful old town of Bohodukhiv - “town of god’s spirit” - is being relentlessly bombed for several days by the Russian military. It is here that a famous Ukrainian writer Mykola Khvylovyi studied. The terror by shaheeds, bombs and drones is relentless, erasing everything. 051
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 16/04/2026After the night of drone and missile attacks I feel like a little plastic lamb in the Kharkiv Central Park. But the day is busy. I need to run for a training, then deadlines, and if the weather doesn’t curse us, an expedition. 0101
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 15/04/2026Starting the most unique book for breakfast - a non-fiction story by two ethnographers in Izyum about Otaman Savonov, a Ukrainian who in 1918-1921 was fighting against both white russians and bolsheviks in Izyum. There is a chapter dedicated to him being “kharakternyk”, i.e. a Witcher 👀. 062
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 07/04/2026Russian state is consistently attacking cultural heritage of Ukraine. The 1835 Donets-Zakharzhevsky mansion survived two world wars, but not today’s russia. Colonel Donets was a Ukrainian Cossack settler in the 17th century Sloboda Ukraine. His family would become rich in centuries to come. 050
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 04/04/2026Dear all, for my birthday under the sounds of Shaheeds I’m fundraising for some important equipment, to join one of my favourite Kharkiv initiatives. Today you have a chance to win my book! Links to the fundraiser in comments! 👇👇 273
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 06/03/2026Love early morning walks through the city. Assumption Cathedral of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Kharkiv on Gogol street. It is the main Catholic Church in Kharkiv. 080
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 26/02/2026I couldn’t help but analyze the russian gaze and the obsessive compulsion of russian intellectuals to write about Ukraine: open.substack.com/pub/vika4goo... 2186
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 24/02/2026My awkward translation of a poem by Anatolii Kytchynskyi, a poet from Kherson, The Cold of That Winter (2005). We called the cold of that winter “beastly”, Because it was so freezing you could bark. But language would save us. There was a feeling That all the colds in the universe👇 161
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 24/02/2026Starting this day in Kharkiv with a class of fly yoga was definitely a choice 😅. As we were swinging in hammocks after the threat of guided bombs subsided, the instructor asked if anyone watched the new adaptation of the Wuthering Heights already. 050
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 22/02/2026Happy pancake holiday. In Ukraine, it’s called either masliana (Масляна) or Kolodyi (Колодій). My kitchen is warm enough to cook again! Tried to make crepe suzette. Let’s burn the scarecrow of winter and approach spring. 080
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 22/02/2026This Kharkiv cat is a lightning, a Sunday messenger. 0141
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 13/02/2026There is nothing like taking a relaxing hot bath in a cold ass winter apartment, and hearing a female voice from a street loudspeaker “attention, attention, missile threat, missile threat” 💀 040
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 12/02/2026It’s 0C outside, and I don’t see clouds of my breath in the apartment anymore🥳. Celebrated with some oven baked oatmeal with leftover barbecue meat. And my love - regional paper Slobidsky Kraj. “Sloboda” was a free settlement of Ukrainians in 17th century. 080
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 10/02/2026Update on my Kharkiv flowers. Banana is not doing well. It’s +7 inside, can see my breath. Today the new heater has to arrive 🙏. 080
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 09/02/2026Breakfast in candlelight, watching Super Bowl halftime show using WiFi from a cafe on generator downstairs. 0142
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 05/02/2026“Don’t touch, sleeping till spring” - a plant in the hallway of Kharkiv School of Architecture says (now based in Lviv). I wish I could say that too. 060
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 04/02/2026An old orchid in my apartment is trying to bloom in -20 relying on a cold radiator it stands on. The way strength is born out of care, and violence out of great weakness of the criminal and indifference of the surrounding world. 090
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 03/02/2026Kharkiv groundhog Tymko IV predicted six more weeks of winter. Thanks for nothing, Tymko. We see you’re also embarrassed. 060
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 26/01/2026Weekend my the Saltivka forest in Kharkiv. As russian drones hit residential homes, people play hockey on frozen water. 090
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 25/01/2026To sweeten the desperate cold of winter the famous Kharkiv cake is on discount in my supermarket. 😅 081
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 24/01/202625 Shaheed drones hit my district overnight in Kharkiv. It’s strange but I always feel when they target civilians specifically. Everything sounds differently. I was born in the maternity hospital that was hit. I can’t sleep and can’t wake up. They do this on weekends so that people didn’t rest. 04918
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 20/01/2026Modernist 1960s cafe Krystal in Kharkiv, was renovated in 2020. The problem with the renovation as you see are the pines that were enclosed in concrete and died. The cafe is famous for the Bilochka (squirrel) icecream - thick cream dessert with chocolate and lots of hazelnuts. 051
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 19/01/2026Palm tree that survived ww1 and ww2 in Kharkiv botanical garden. The greenhouse suffered from russian attack in 2022, and the tree for the first time was threatened. Now the garden is fragile as ever, as most of the homes are barely heated after continuous attacks. 0206
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 18/01/2026Derzhprom, my modernist love on an evening walk in a winter Kharkiv. 0190
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 13/01/2026This Kharkiv cat wishes all an adventurous Tuesday. 0132
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 09/01/2026“Someone who could sit here is now in russian captivity”, - a sign on the bench along the Lopan river in Kharkiv. 091
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 06/01/2026Dear all, the first session in the Cities at War Lecture Series in 2026 will be given by Viktoriia Grivina on "Kharkiv is a Dream. Planning a Future During War". Join her timely talk on Wednesday, 07.01.2026 at 4 pm CET. register here -> lnkd.in/eSVGc5wD 040
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 06/01/2026My friend mending her artwork while 5 russian missiles hit the city in the distance. @kharkivisadream.bsky.social 030
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 05/01/2026Kharkiv pedagogic university decorated for the holidays. Hryhorii Skovoroda, baroque Ukrainian philosopher also got an image update. 050
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 04/01/2026Kharkiv snowperson reflecting my emotional state. 0120
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 03/01/2026My dear Kharkiv Tractor Factory hood. 1930s-1940s were militant years for Soviet architects, even little windows in the hallways resemble medieval fortress loopholes. 0110
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 02/01/2026My Christmas tree in Kharkiv. Even in this hellish year I couldn’t help running down the street to a tiny Christmas tree market and decorating my crooked little tree that nobody else wanted to take 😅. 0140
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 31/12/2025Happy New Year greetings from a Kharkiv Christmas tram, friends! We shall overcome, one day ❤️. 1101
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 31/12/2025Christmas carols’ choir in Kharkiv. Singing together Carol of the Bells makes my voice breaks, as home of this beautiful song, the city of Pokrovsk is dying before our eyes. But no, Carol lives and Pokrovsk lives in it. 171
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 29/12/2025This Kharkiv cat wishes all a productive last Monday of the year (he knows it won’t be). 0101
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 28/12/2025Reading stories from Sloboda Ukraine on a long train ride. 050
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 28/12/2025Beautiful book of recipes and stories of gardening from across Ukraine, result of a workshop at Jam Factory in Lviv. 090
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 27/12/2025Carol singers, snow, bombs, Ukrainian Christmas. 080
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 27/12/2025The detail of the old doors and a privilege to have something that wasn’t destroyed. I really appreciate the rustic vibes of Lviv. 0111
Viktoriia Grivina @brams884.bsky.social · 25/12/2025Graham Greene lived through London Blitz, and his descriptions of the feeling of the world was approaching, and details are very on point to what I have seen in Kharkiv. 130
