iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Illia Ponomarenko @ioponomarenko.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

The last three days in Kyiv, and especially today, seem to have been much quieter. Even after Merz had already left the city. Could Ukraine’s defense forces really have adapted to the situation so quickly and sharply reduced the number of enemy jet-powered drones making it through to the capital?

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Illia Ponomarenko @ioponomarenko.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Happy belated German Unity Day, dear Germany! 🇩🇪 We remember and appreciate how Germany helps save our country every single day.

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Illia Ponomarenko @ioponomarenko.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Robotic. Turrets. With. Computer. Vision. And. Artificial. Intelligence. Automatically. Defend. Kyiv. Against. Jet-powered. Drones.

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Illia Ponomarenko @ioponomarenko.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

We always love you, nations of the free world! 🇺🇦

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Illia Ponomarenko @ioponomarenko.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

The fact that Western embassies and international missions are openly refusing to give in to the Kremlin’s threats and publicly declaring that they’re staying in Kyiv is a great slap in Putin’s face and a very eloquent middle finger to him. Excellent and thank you.

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Illia Ponomarenko @ioponomarenko.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Sweet old Kyiv these days. The best place on earth, no matter what.

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Illia Ponomarenko @ioponomarenko.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Well, of course a Hitler apologist is inevitably going to be a Putin fan too. It’s the same field of batshit insanity and twisted worldview.

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Illia Ponomarenko @ioponomarenko.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

This painting by Mykola Ivasiuk, completed in 1912, illustrates my favorite scene from my forthcoming book about Ukraine’s historical fate. Bohdan Khmelnytsky, leader of the Ukrainian Cossack uprising of 1648, makes a triumphant entry into Kyiv.

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Illia Ponomarenko @ioponomarenko.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Just hanging on the edge of my seat, waiting for all the witnesses of “Ukrainian biolabs,” because of which Russia was right to exterminate Ukraine, to lose their shit to the same extent over the very much real reckless leak of pneumonic plague from a lab in Russia’s Irkutsk.

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Illia Ponomarenko @ioponomarenko.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Captain Marat Mambetov of Ukraine’s 40th Tactical Aviation Brigade “The Ghost of Kyiv.” Gone into the skies forever on a combat mission today.

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Illia Ponomarenko @ioponomarenko.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

By the way, on these very days, September 25–27, in 1938, the Soviet punitive authorities placed the great Ukrainian Serhiy Korolyov on a list of arrested persons slated for execution.

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Illia Ponomarenko @ioponomarenko.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Just imagine the amount of squealing, hands thrown up to the heavens, and shirts torn open in righteous indignation if Ukraine, even once (!) responded to Russia’s mass killings and barbaric bombardment of historical heritage by striking the Bolshoi Theatre or the Hermitage…

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Illia Ponomarenko @ioponomarenko.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

The Chinese Communist Party’s Politburo must be so dumbfounded by all of this that they simply can’t believe there isn’t some elaborate trick behind it -- it just can’t all be this stupid.

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Illia Ponomarenko @ioponomarenko.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Tonight I took the car and drove across all of Kyiv, just to see how my beloved city feels at this time. It’s a strange feeling.

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Illia Ponomarenko @ioponomarenko.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Yes, one day after the war, Ze will write a book called "How I Kept My Cool Around Trump All Those Fucking Years" and it’ll be the bestseller of the decade.

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Illia Ponomarenko @ioponomarenko.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Going round in circles every time, with the same two or three tiresome primitive lines. No substance, no meaningful results, no prospects, just strained self-adoration and petty publicity.

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Illia Ponomarenko @ioponomarenko.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

This is Saint Sophia of Kyiv. Perhaps the main national shrine and historical treasure of Ukraine -- and, of course, one of Kyiv’s most important landmarks, which many of you know well.

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Reposted by Illia Ponomarenko

Mick Ryan @warinthefuture.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

“Asking how this war will end, therefore, is unfortunately the wrong question. Even if there is some temporary truce or accommodation with the Houthis or Iran, the better request is: Tell me how this gets worse.” Eliot Cohen at @theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

theatlantic.com

Don’t Ask How This War Ends

It is, unfortunately, the wrong question.

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Illia Ponomarenko @ioponomarenko.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

The story of how Nestle and Auchan refused to leave Russia in 2022, only for Putin to eventually seize their businesses with a single stroke of the pen, deserves to be told by sages as a biblical parable.

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Illia Ponomarenko @ioponomarenko.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Do you also, when flying, watch the flight attendants perform their obligatory safety instructions ritual to the voice over the speakers before takeoff so they won’t feel bad that nobody gives a damn about them?

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Illia Ponomarenko @ioponomarenko.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Let me guess: when Russian drones start flying over Slovakia, Robert Fico will be the first to yell that French, German, or Italian fighters must shoot them down, so that he can go on enjoying low unemployment, infrastructure and peace under the protection of “some article 5” that he spits on.

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Illia Ponomarenko @ioponomarenko.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

This is really good. God, I miss frontline reporting.

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Illia Ponomarenko @ioponomarenko.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Once this war is over, I’m gonna to go to Boryspil Airport and stay there for a week or so -- just wandering around, eating sandwiches, sleeping on benches in lounges, shaving in the bathrooms like Tom Hanks in that Spielberg film, and waving at departing and arriving flights like some village fool.

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Illia Ponomarenko @ioponomarenko.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

So, in short, it’s clear: there never was, and still isn’t, any mutual agreement to stop strikes on energy infrastructure and oil facilities and Donald Trump, as usual, is just brimming with imaginary victories.

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Illia Ponomarenko @ioponomarenko.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Well, if even THIS doesn’t help great invincible Russia defeat some mysterious “Kiev regime” in the 12th year of the war and the 5th year of its triumphant blitzkrieg on Kyiv, then I really don’t know what will

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Reposted by Illia Ponomarenko

Illia Ponomarenko @ioponomarenko.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Friends, I’m immensely happy to announce my second book, The Land of Tears and Hope: The Ukrainian Story. Pre-order here: bloomsbury.com/us/land-of-t... Many of you know me as a defense reporter who spent years breaking bread with Ukrainian soldiers in trenches....

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Illia Ponomarenko @ioponomarenko.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Bought this little treasure years ago at the bookstore inside NATO Headquarters (I absolutely love that place and miss it dearly, if you know, you know!). The great HBO series turns 25.

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Illia Ponomarenko @ioponomarenko.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

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Illia Ponomarenko @ioponomarenko.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

What if, with his stupid lie about the capture of such a great metropolis as the Ukrainian town of Sviatohirsk (population around 4,000 before 2022), Putin was simply trying to impress Witkoff and Kushner ahead of their latest farcical visit to Moscow?

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Illia Ponomarenko @ioponomarenko.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

The sky over Kyiv Oblast tonight. While I was photographing this, a fighter jet roared high overhead. Then came a burst of rapid cannon fire, and moments later something crashed to the ground somewhere in the distance -- a Shahed, I guess.

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Illia Ponomarenko @ioponomarenko.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

You know, Ukrainians can "run out of food" in only one circumstance: when a Chekist occupier stands on their land pressing a Nagant revolver to their temple and seizing the grain they honestly grew to fund his deranged imperial schemes, as has happened more than once before.

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Illia Ponomarenko @ioponomarenko.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Goodnight, the heroic city. There will be a better time ahead.

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