I love poets, painters and pianists. I even like some politicians. I like people from Russia. I like people from Ukraine. I like people from a lot of countries. I can't bear the thought of houses and cities being destroyed that were once the place of birth of people whose books, music and paintings I love. Here are photos of some of the people whose work I admire – and who were born in Odessa, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Zhytomyr, Lviv, Dvirkivshchyna or Bolshoy Fontan. Nationality isn't important. Culture is. I hope that once we will only remember Charlie Chaplin, and not the dictator he made look ridiculous.
Lesya Ukrainka
born in Novohrad-Volynskyi, 1871Kazimir Malevich
born in Kyiv, 1879Anna Akhmatova
born in Odessa, 1889Mikhail Bulgakov
born in Kyiv, 1891Isaac Babel
born in Odessa, 1894Ilya Ilf
born in Odessa, 1897Golda Meir
born in Kyiv, 1898Yevgeny Petrov
born in Odessa, 1902Vladimir Horowitz,
born in Kyiv, 1903David Oistrakh
born in Odessa, 1908Sviatoslav Richter
born in Zhytomyr, 1915Emil Gilels
born in Odessa, 1916Simon Wiesenthal
born in Buchach, 1908Zbigniew Herbert
born in Lviv, 1924Mark Taimanov
born in Kharkiv, 1926Andriy Shevchenko
born in Dvirkivshchyna, 1976
No to war
As Sting said in 1985 (and again in a new version on Instagram in 2022[1]):
Believe me when I say to you
I hope the Russians love their children too