Valzhyna Mort

What is rolling in my mind on repeat and without trying are the words of Ukrainian poets: Ilya Kaminsky, Serhiy Zhadan, Boris and Ludmila Khersonsky, Ia Kyva, Lyuba Yakimchuk, and others. Thank you for your words that preserve me in their warm ice and deliver me from day to day.

Political prisoner Leanid Sudalenka was released & gave an interview. Out of physical & psychological torture he endured, what moved me most is that his 84-y.o. mother was told that the whole time he was “abroad to make money.” Meaning: doing work Europeans hire foreigners to do.

Thank you, Kate, for highlighting Belarusian language. It survived 250 yrs of Russian attempts to erase it. On Stalin’s orders, our writers were executed, books destroyed. But it lived among illiterate country people. Today again, one can be detained for it and tortured to death.

Five months with neither contact nor news from Belarusian political prisoners Maria Kalesnikava and Maxim Znak.

Belarusian artist Ales Pushkin, recognized as a political prisoner, died last night in the intensive care after being transported there from prison under unclear circumstances.