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© Collage: Kamil Czudej

This opinion piece argues that Europe is often wrongly perceived as weak and indecisive in the face of Russia’s war against Ukraine. The author contends that Europe has in fact undergone significant transformation and now possesses substantial political, economic, and military leverage. The key challenge is not a lack of capacity, but a lack of strategic decisiveness. The article explores tensions between European and American approaches to security, critiques narratives coming from Moscow, Washington, and Kyiv, and calls for Europe to more assertively define and execute its own strategy in the conflict.

• Author: Filip Rudnik
• Medium: Kultura Liberalna
• Original title: Europa ma karty w wojnie z Rosją. Czas zdecydować, jak je rozegrać
• Safety and Security

© holder : Artists - OPEN GROUP (Yuriy Biley, Pavlo Kovach, Anton Varga) & Curator - Marta Czyż, photo by Jacopo Salvi, Zachęta archive

This article examines how the war in Ukraine has reshaped the political meaning of contemporary art at the Venice Biennale. It focuses on the controversy around Russia’s planned return to the 61st Biennale despite its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the protests against that decision, and the Ukrainian project Security Guarantees, which reflects on the collapse of international security assurances such as the Budapest Memorandum. The article also discusses Open Group’s anti-war installation Repeat After Me II, presented at the Polish Pavilion in 2024, where displaced Ukrainians reproduce the sounds of war from memory. More broadly, the piece argues that art can no longer be separated from geopolitics, violence, solidarity, and questions of cultural representation in Europe.

• Author: Nataliya Parshchyk
• Medium: Kultura Liberalna
• Original title: Gwarancje bezpieczeństwa? SSHHHHHSSSSSSSHHHSSSSH – tak leci rakieta
• Culture and Identity

© Revue Prostor

Light pollution, traffic pollution, and visual pollution all exist. Recently, the issue of noise pollution has come to the fore, with a media-covered campaign against certain traditional cultural events or the venues where they take place. Or, unfortunately, took place, because they are now over.

• Author: Jiří Hlinka
• Medium: Revue Prostor
• Original title: Česko: budoucí ostrov ticha uprostřed Evropy?
• Culture and Identity

© Revue Prostor

We perceive sound as something intangible and fleeting, especially today, in the age of the internet, when music and other audio content flows through streaming platforms, podcasts, digital libraries, and cloud archives. Endless hours of recordings are available with just a few clicks. But every song has a body—the device and medium that carries it—and behind it stands an industrial background, infrastructure... and an ecological footprint.

• Author: Martin Mejzr
• Medium: Revue Prostor
• Original title: Hovězí, ropa i tropický hmyz: K materialitě moderního zvukového průmyslu
• Culture and Identity

Alina Otzemko by the cenotaph of her husband, fot. Y. Surkova

A reported feature on how Russia’s war against Ukraine has disrupted traditional burial and mourning practices. Through cases such as empty graves (cenotaphs), destroyed cemeteries, missing bodies, improvised memorial rituals, and the emergence of “death doulas, ” the article shows how Ukrainians are creating new forms of remembrance under conditions of occupation, displacement, and mass loss. It combines personal testimony, social observation, and reflections on memory, grief, religion, and public commemoration.

• Author: Yulia Surkova
• Medium: Kultura Liberalna
• Original title: Jak wojna zmieniła rytuały żałobne w Ukrainie
• Global Social Transformations

© Sára Činčurová

Across Ukraine, children are facing things that children should never have to face.

• Author: Sára Činčurová
• Medium: JÁDU
• Original title: Detstvo bez detstva
• Safety and Security

© Collage: Kamil Czudej

This personal essay by a Ukrainian author living in Poland explores experiences of migration, identity, and belonging in the context of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The author recounts her journey from Lviv to Warsaw, her initial hesitation about settling abroad, and the circumstances that forced her to leave Ukraine in February 2022. The text reflects on Polish-Ukrainian relations, everyday solidarity, cultural proximity, and challenges of integration. It highlights both emotional and practical aspects of displacement, including language barriers, bureaucratic hurdles, and evolving perceptions of Ukrainians in Polish society.

• Author: Nataliya Parshchyk
• Kultura Liberalna
• Original title: Pytają mnie, czy Polacy jeszcze lubią Ukraińców. Ja tu mam drugi dom
• Culture and Identity

© Alena Kolesniková

Pavel Talankin is an ordinary man who had the opportunity to document the military indoctrination of elementary schools in Russia mandated by the state. A teacher whose former students went to war against Ukraine. A Russian who decided to take action and secretly smuggle his recordings into Europe. Interview with "Mr nobody against Putin".

• Author: Ella Katrovasová
• Medium: Jádu
• Original title: Ruská opozice, propaganda a kolektivní zodpovědnost
• Pillars of Democracy