The Black Sea Whale No. 2 - Ideas and Stories from Ukraine

The End of Tyranny Begins With Saving a Whale

“Although planned before the war, this vital magazine finds itself with a key role now, offering a unique perspective on Ukraine through personal experiences of the war, reflections on local cultures, and broader political contexts. All colorfully illustrated by local artists.” – MagCulture, London.

The Black Sea Whale №2 unmasks the deception and stale euphemisms of the past to reveal why Ukrainians choose to fight against tyranny. Oleksii Dubrov describes how Ukraine is breaking the cyclical nature of Russian aggression in “Mature Ukraine,” while Sergej Sumlenny shows us the Kremlin’s plan to inculcate a mentality of war throughout Russian culture in “The Entertainment Industry of Russian Irredentism.”

Oleh Mahdych and Marichka Melnyk uncover the Russian elite’s history of weaponizing personal fear for their own self aggrandizement in “The Spectre of Smuta” and Nazar Tokar uncovers the same tactic in the insidious occupation of Western media in his story “The Adventures of Russian Propagandists.” From the trenches of Russia’s war against Ukraine, Cadmus asks whether the world has done enough to condemn the symbols of totalitarianism in “Hammer + Sickle = Death + Famine.”

A Ukrainian woman struggles to survive a misogynistic repressive culture that finds fertility in the toxic Soviet patriarchy of the 1950’s in “A Working Woman’s Tale” by Marichka Melnyk. And the next chapter of the Deus ex Ucraina series, “The Lost Ones” by Viktoriia Antonenko, is set in an alternate reality after the Winter Crisis in Occupied Moscow, raising the question whether the true self can survive when subjected to a callous tyrant.