#ukrainian orphanage

[vitalwebmaster]

Keeping the Past Alive: A Guide to the Top 10 Essential Ukrainian Traditions

Experience the heart and soul of Ukraine through 10 fascinating traditions! From festive celebrations to mouth-watering dishes, discover the country's rich cultural heritage. #UkrainianTraditions #CulturalHeritage #Travel

Ukraine’s rich cultural heritage and traditions are a testament to its long history and unique folklore. From Easter to Independence Day, Ukrainians celebrate various holidays and customs that reflect the country’s agricultural roots, religious beliefs, and national identity. This article will explore ten Ukrainian traditions that every national follows. Easter Easter is one of the most…

[xoheisse]

Oleksandr Yakushchenko

One of the Ukrainian teens who were forcibly taken from orphanages in Ukraine and given up for adoption, an 18-year-old boy from the Kherson region, committed suicide in Krasnodar Krai. He was trying to make it back to Ukraine for the holidays but had his passport taken away.

"Nobody f*cking needs me there. They made me understand that"

"When they put the flowers, they just came up and threw them as if he were a dog. And when it was time to leave, the foster family said: "Thank God he's dead. Less problems".

[vyvilha]

russia bombed an orphanage in sumy yesterday, a university and a hospital in poltava today, why the HELL nobody except for ukrainians talks about it

[heedzhee-art]

my new character, his whole deal is that he's low-key.... uhhhh ....

So this is Luciano, basically he was born out of my interpretation of 2p Italy (alt design of hetalia Italy without a personality) being too different from how he's usually depicted in the fandom and the headcanons slipping into a separate setting that couldn't mix with hetalia (and I didn't want to make it hetalia either), I also got very heavily inspired by Schmalgauzen music (Ukrainian cabaret band) last January and then boom I hallucinated a backstory and a setting for this guy so I decided ok he's mine now

So personality-wise, Luciano is into sophistication and theatrical wit, but also has a playful, silly side. Throughout his life he's caught between a longing for connection and his fear of vulnerability, shaped by a past that left him grappling with identity and self-worth, and his main struggle lies in overcoming the scars of abandonment which make him question his place in the world and whether he’s deserving of love. Despite this, he radiates charm, humor, and a love for the dramatic, finding joy in life's finer details like make-up, sweets, fashion, collecting fancy stuff, and art. He deeply craves the feeling of belonging. He is also an intersex man, which is a big part of his identity since having PAIS shaped Luciano’s worldview in multifaceted ways. Negatively, it deepened his feelings of being "other," contributing to the belief that he had to earn acceptance. Positively, it cultivated empathy and a rebellious confidence as he grew to embrace his unique self thanks to challenging societal norms, so he comes off as unconventional and strange to most people, but grows to embrace it. Neutral aspects include a heightened awareness of individuality and a nuanced understanding of human complexities which shaped his intellectual and artistic pursuits, so most of the things he paints have to do with that. Ultimately I imagine it made him introspective and resilient

Now to the fun part, he was born to wealthy Italian parents who expected a "normal" child but got him instead, they panicked, tossed him into an orphanage, and pretended they adopted him later to save face (so he was deadass adopted by his birth parents), his teenage years were spent under the "guidance" of his adoptive father, a shady businessman with an absurdly specific niche in illegal antique firearm sales, involved in a lot of gunrunning, where he also learned to use weapons and charm a room in equal measure. He was also largely shaped by the streets of an ever-so-slightly haunted villa... Luciano eventually got tired of the criminal world’s chaos (especially after he faced legal consequences with his family) and set out to reinvent himself, embracing art, cooking, and vintage collectibles as if it were a full-time job. He later managed to earn himself a privilege to travel to other countries, particularly he's been to a lot of France. He couldn't be viewed as a legitimate business heir and instead got the training of an agent/guard/spy. Also, he has a white pet kitty. Yea

With all that I would like to also explore themes of fabricated memories with his character (Schmalgauzen song reference 😒); growing up in a volatile and high-stakes criminal environment might have led Luciano to subconsciously block out memories as a defense mechanism, then substance use manifested in memory issues, with confabulation as a subconscious way to fill in the gaps. So his life story focuses on figuring out which of the things he remembers are real while trying to find a place he could belong to where he's loved. Then there's fear of abandonment, his identity issues, unstable relationships, self-sabotaging behavior, impulsivity, brief moments of feeling emptiness. Also he's only about 25 years old and I've decided it's all happening in like 1960s

Schmalgauzen lyrics also inspired me to come up with a lot of abstract visuals for his character, which I want to use in future art with him, hopefully someday 😭 I kind of hate when this happens, one moment I look at a random design and the next I have a bazillion ideas that seem too overwhelming to apply to one concept, but I clearly have vivid scenes and ideas for plots I could put him into, like he's a tragic and complicated guy when I lay every little detail out about him, but if I have to imagine him behaving, he's a really sweet and fun character, and I don't wanna abandon this concept, so I didn't want it to just sit in my head forever, at least now it's also on my Instagram and Tumblr... mucho texto...

[merrymorningofmay]

An 18-year-old Ukrainian orphan, Oleksandr Yakushchenko, who was relocated from the Kherson region to Russia, reportedly committed suicide while living with a foster family in Russian Krasnodar Krai, Russian media Vazhnyie Istorii reported on December 24. The information had not been publicly disclosed. The head of the foster family, Oleksandr Lukashenko, said that Yakushchenko hanged himself a few kilometers from their home. “His body was found by workers heading to their shift in the morning,” Lukashenko said. When asked about the reasons behind the young man’s suicide, Lukashenko responded: “How would I know why? He was 18 years old, an adult. He just lived with us.” Vazhnyie Istorii reported at least one case when Lukashenka’s family took away his documents. It is unknown how many times this happened. Probably, the guardianship authorities were aware of this practice. “Guardianship said that he wanted to return to Ukraine, they took away his passport, and he went and hanged himself because of that,” says Karina Petrenko, who was brought up together with him in a Ukrainian orphanage.

[unhonestlymirror]

The child was stolen, the name and citizenship were changed:

the head of the "Righteous Russia" party, Serhii Mironov, adopted a 10-month-old girl from the occupied Kherson region, who was kidnapped in 2022.

The publication "Vazhnye istorii" writes that in August 2022, his fifth wife Inna Varlamova and his deputy Yana Lantratova personally came to the Kherson orphanage and took two pupils from there - 10-month-old Margarita Prokopenko and two-year-old Ilya Vashchenko. The girl was adopted, her name and parents' were changed - they were named Marina Sergeevna Mjronova, and instead of Kherson in Ukraine, Podolsk near Moscow was recorded as her place of birth.

We remind you that the adoption of illegally deported Ukrainian children to russia International law qualifies it as a war crime and considers it genocide.

(C)TSN

[gwydionmisha]

It's kidnapping is part of genocide.

[starlightshadowsworld]

I don’t buy into the Fyodor is Atsushi’s father but it would make this one random line from the manga make sense.

In chapter 13 Atsushi brings Kyouka to the Agency after the cargo boat fight. When Detective Minoura comes to visit and notices Kyouka looks similar to the assassin they’re looking for.

He starts questioning her and Atsushi panics and says “it’s all a long story. It all began when I was doing a government mission and doing a Cossack dance in a wheat field to search for the elusive Tsuchinoko snake.”

Which first of all, someone needs to teach Atsushi how to lie better. He can act like a star but man he can’t lie for shit.

This line is played as a joke and Fukuzawa steps in to claim Kyouka as his granddaughter. Which no one questions because of how similar they act and because Fukuzawa is scary as hell without trying.

But this line has always stood out to me as too weirdly specific to just be a throw away bit. Looking it up the Cossack dance also known as the Hopak dance is a Russian and Ukrainian folk dance.

And that’s just a very random thing for Atsushi to know about. Sure he could’ve read about it but it’s not something I’d expect a teenager who grew up mostly in solitary in a poor orphanage in the middle of nowhere in Japan.

Not saying it’s impossible but it’s a weirdly specific detail to add in.

Especially because the snake he mentions, the Tsuchinoko snake is from Japan. Well it’s from Japanese folklore and I could give Atsushi a hard time for not picking an actual snake.

But a really specific dance.

But he’s a weretiger so who fucking knows if this snake exists in this world. Also its name translates literally to “child of hammer.” Which is pretty fucking dark considering what the Headmaster did to him with a hammer when he was 11 years old.

But if Atsushi was related to Fyodor, a Russian man who honestly was probably around when the dance was created (sometime in the 1660’s among military communities.)

It could be used as an explanation as to why he knows this. That or Atsushi was just a very cultured child (or my headcanon that many of the staff are originally from other countries who fought in the Great War and then settled here after it ended.)

Or it’s just a silly throwaway line that means nothing that’s also an option but where’s the fun in that?

Also love Junichiro and Kunikida silently judging Atsushi the whole time for his weird ass lie.

[mariacallous]

In her 1996 novel, Fieldwork in Ukrainian Sex, Oksana Zabuzhko wrote that for Ukrainians, “Fear was passed on in the genes.” Zabuzhko, one of the most important living Ukrainian writers, was referring to the childhood fear of saying the wrong thing to the wrong person in the Soviet era. Anyone who approached you could be spying for the KGB, and if you let a careless word slip, the bad men would come “and put Daddy in prison.” But that line captures what Zabuzhko’s novel is about: the inherited fear of oblivion born between the hungry jaws of empire, or what she calls the “eternal Ukrainian curse of nonexistence.”

Fieldwork in Ukrainian Sex was a sensation when it was published in Ukraine, but it took 15 years for it to be translated to English. Even then, it didn’t find a U.S. readership until the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022. The book’s path is emblematic of the tough road to English translation, much less readership, for novels written in Ukrainian. Until this year, not a single novel translated from Ukrainian had been published by a major U.S. publisher.

Tanja Maljartschuk’s Forgottenness, the first to break that barrier, is a book about Ukrainian identity and the struggle against nonexistence. Originally published in 2016, when it won the BBC’s Ukrainian Book of the Year Award, it tells the story of a contemporary Ukrainian writer who becomes obsessed with Viacheslav Lypynskyi, an important Polish figure in the early 20th-century Ukrainian independence movement. Lypynskyi studied Ukrainian at university in the early 1900s, when teaching the language was scandalous; both Russians and Poles considered it “a dialect of either Russian or Polish, or both concurrently.” Printing Ukrainian works was also prohibited, “punishable by imprisonment or exile.”

Throughout history, Ukrainians have faced this paradox: a denial of their existence (Ukrainian isn’t a language) combined with brutal repression (and you are forbidden to speak it). As Maljartschuk writes, the struggle makes many “lose their minds.”

Forgottenness is full of characters shrugging, often in dramatic situations. While American critics often lament shrugs (along with nods and smiles) as lazy dialogue tags, for the Ukrainian writer, the shrug is an important gesture. Soviet-born U.S. writer Gary Shteyngart once wrote, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that Ukraine’s coat of arms could be a man shrugging. This attitude can easily be mistaken for nihilism, but it is far more complex than that. On its most basic level, it comes from a learned acceptance that many situations are beyond one’s control. For generations of Ukrainians, this acceptance has been necessary to maintain sanity.

Ukrainians have found different ways of shrugging. In Forgottenness, the unnamed narrator remembers how her father, like many Ukrainian men of his generation, became immersed in kung fu in the 1980s, needing to feel like he could protect himself. Her grandfather, after feigning insanity to avoid military service, worked as a forced laborer, melting down church bells that were transported across the Soviet Union to be made into weapons; for years, he responded to most things with a joke, fueling himself on laughter.

She remembers how her grandmother was left at an orphanage by a father who would soon die in the Holodomor, Joseph Stalin’s terror famine of 1932-33, during which millions of Ukrainians starved to death. In an attempt to understand and connect with her family, the narrator asks her mother how this genealogy of suffering affected her. “Mom shrugged. ‘What was there to be affected by? That’s how things were, and that’s all there is to it.’”

The narrator has the opposite reaction. Her fascination with Lypynskyi, who almost lost his mind, falling into infirmity under the weight of defending the idea of a Ukrainian nation, comes partly from identifying with him. For the narrator, her inability to shrug leads to an existential crisis. She becomes terrified of the outside world. For months, she stops going outside. She begins to mop her floor relentlessly. She stands on her head to see things from a different perspective. She obsessively reads old newspapers in search of references to Lypynskyi. She is desperate to understand history. In a recurring image of the novel, she imagines time as a blue whale eating plankton by the millions. There is no mystery as to whom the plankton represent.

The historical parts of Forgottenness can be challenging, both to follow and to witness, for the simple reason that Ukrainian history is challenging. Lypynskyi lived through the early 20th century, a time when hope for a Ukrainian nation flickered before being brutally smothered.

As the narrator puts it, in the three years after the Russian Revolution, “Kyiv, like a loose woman, changed hands over ten times … and each new seizure ended in bloody purges.” Borders change, names change, empires come, empires go, and everyone dies. One reason that Maljartschuk’s is the first Ukrainian-language novel to break into U.S. commercial publishing is that so many Ukrainian writers from the 20th century were permanently silenced.

As Ukrainian writer Anastasia Levkova recently wrote, under Stalin, 500 of the foremost Ukrainian writers were executed. But she is quick to point out that Stalin was not solely responsible for silencing Ukrainian literature: For example, Vasyl Stus, one of the most famous Ukrainian poets of the 20th century, died in a Soviet forced labor camp decades after Stalin’s death. It is not just Stalin, nor is it just current Russian President Vladimir Putin—it is the Russian Empire that denies Ukrainian history, Ukrainian language, and Ukrainian existence.

Ukraine, one character in Forgottenness laments, “has so many million bodies but so few actual people.” The Russian Empire won’t even allow remembrance of the bodies. When the narrator goes to visit Lypynskyi’s grave, she cannot find it, because the cemetery’s headstones were bulldozed and used to line the floors of pigsties during collectivization. How is she to come to terms with her past when the empire has erased it?

As she’s fighting panic attacks, the narrator watches pigeons across the street building nests and laying eggs on neglected balconies. “Once in a while, the building’s owners would toss the eggs off the balconies onto the asphalt below. The pigeons would then sit on the roof and dispassionately observe the destruction of their offspring.” The pigeons shrug not because they don’t care, but because—what choice do they have?

The narrator’s inability to be like the pigeons almost kills her. But she can still think, write, and face her crisis head-on. In what might seem like an anti-climax, but is actually a triumph, she seeks out a therapist. As she puts it, in her part of the world, “the human head has one purpose—to eat.” Her mother condemns her for being a drama queen. But the narrator finds another woman, a professional, who listens and who cares. She begins to trust her. She starts talking her way out. Through language and solidarity with a fellow Ukrainian, she finds her way back to the world.

Maljartschuk, a Vienna-based Ukrainian novelist, wrote Forgottenness between the Maidan Revolution in 2014 and the full-scale Russian invasion of 2022, a period when Ukrainian art, newly liberated from colonial shackles, was blossoming. Its Ukrainian title, Zabuttya, means both “forgetfulness” and “oblivion,” and although this is not a novel about the war, no event has brought the threat of oblivion into more urgent focus than Russia’s invasion.

According to Forgottenness’ promotional materials, Norton’s inspiration for publishing the book was a March 2022 article in the New York Times about the urgency of bringing Ukrainian literature to the West after Russia’s invasion. Because of the sudden prominence of Ukraine in the American consciousness, there is the temptation for Americans to read Ukrainian literature today anthropologically, approaching it as a window into the country instead of an imaginary story about Ukrainian characters.

To be clear, this is not a criticism of the publisher: I am very grateful that Norton published Forgottenness, and I hope that more U.S. publishers will follow its lead. But how does it affect the reader’s experience to approach the book with images of rubble in mind? How does an American reader get around the trap of reading Ukrainian fiction like it’s nonfiction—of reading it for information rather than emotion—when current events are the reason for its translation into English? The narrator’s panic attacks are brought on not by missiles but by the chaos in her mind and the fear in her genes. Is it not disrespectful to read the book as a guide to understanding Ukraine in 2024?

Fortunately, Forgottenness shares a way to read itself and also to read Ukraine’s latest fight for survival. Maljartschuk personifies the statewide struggle against oblivion in the individual struggle to accept the things you can’t change while refusing to accept the things you can. The struggle, I believe, applies to both the narrator and Ukraine, past and present. The story speaks to what came immediately before the book was published: the Maidan Revolution, in which Ukrainians from every class and background risked their lives to drive out the pro-Russian puppet government, holding Independence Square in Kyiv for three months in the face of a harsh winter, police snipers, government-hired thugs, kidnappings, and torture. But Forgottenness can also speak to what will come after.

The narrator says of her grandfather feigning madness to get out of fighting: “Between a slavish existence and a heroic death, he chose the former, and only thanks to this choice did I become possible.” In her words, she is “the offspring of meekness in the face of power and fear in the face of death.”

But there is no trace of meekness in today’s Ukraine. A generation of Ukrainian writers and artists are now on the front lines of battle or in the rear guard, tirelessly fundraising for equipment for soldiers.

“Everything I’ve done in my life has only come to be by overcoming great fear,” Maljartschuk said in an interview following the 2022 invasion. Fear, as Zabuzhko wrote, lives in the genes. But fear need not paralyze. “Ukrainians are no longer victims,” Maljartschuk added, “but fighters.”

[gryficowa]

Boycott!

Now that I have your attention:

So close...

[samueldays]

The word is "dependent"

KYIV — The suspension of USAID has had a dramatic effect on both Ukrainian and Russian independent news outlets that relied on the grants to operate and produced work often critical of their governments.

(WaPo)

If you look up "rely" in Merriam-Webster, you'll see the first synonym is "depend". In other words, these so-called independent outlets were dependent on USAID grants to operate.

Ukraine’s independent media, a collection of small regional outlets, muckraking investigative websites and internet news platforms, have been reeling since the USAID announcement, with some organizations saying that they are just weeks away from slashing staff or closing down entirely. “We risk losing the achievements of three decades of work and increasing threats to Ukraine’s statehood, democratic values, and pro-Western orientation,” Detector Media, a journalism watchdog, said in a statement on its website last week.

If your existence depends on US government funding and you have not been able to find another ground for existence in three decades, or even a buffer to last more than a few weeks, then you are very much dependent on the US government. Dependent means you are Not Independent. Dependence on a different government is not the same thing as independence. If one wishes to emphasise independent-from-Russia-specifically, a better term might be "foreign agent".

There is a petty point here about dependent independents, and a wider point about a lack of self-awareness and using words like "independent" for positive affect.

I am scornful about this partly for the personal reason that I live among people who do better. The church I attend has figured out this "independent" thing in a way the journalisms haven't. It can't be that hard.

Brief background: For complicated historical reasons involving the former Norwegian state-church and the tiende (tithe or church-tax), the now-mostly-secular Norwegian state conditionally disburses money to churches including the one I attend.

The priests and elders of my congregation are wise men who can anticipate the future, and recognize that this is a potential threat to their independence. The state currently sets acceptable conditions for disbursement. The state may change those conditions in the future. The state might end up threatening my church with "preach so-and-so, or I'll pull your funding" and then my church would have a problem.

So, my church has set up a pass-through system: each year the state's disbursement amount is sent to a different good cause, such as an orphanage in Bolivia or missionaries in Israel. These get a one-time windfall and nobody becomes dependent. (See also Luke 16 on buying friends.) The church runs on donations from members only. This is independence. We don't need to worry about compromising our morals because of state pressure, and we won't have to shut down if we lose that money. The church council figured this out when the stakes were low.

[xoheisse]

Ukrainian children kidnapped by russia are undergoing "patriotic" trainings in russian orphanages to completely strip them of Ukrainian identity and develop love for russian army.

If this war persists for years or is frozen, there is a high chance they will be fighting for russia.

source

[scarfacemarston]

As we spoke about briefly in messages,

If Yelena was in RDR2, how do you think she would've fallen in with the gang.

You have absolute total freedom with this ofc, whatever you see fit works for me!!

Yelena Belova Red Dead Redemption Cross Over Part 1

This turned out long. I warned you, though. lol So this is a combination of historical data and meta mixed with hc.

To me, it would make the most sense for Yelena’s family to immigrate from Russia to the United States. Russians did not care about the United States all that much, so an espionage scenario with Melina and Alexei is very unlikely.

The 1890s was a significant time for Russian immigration because Tsar Alexander III’s regime was highly unpopular, and he ruled with an iron fist. If one was Jewish, it would have been incredibly beneficial to leave as he was literally taking away the few rights they had and was trying to round them up to live in Pogroms. Pogroms are similar to ghettos -�� designated land for Jewish people that were used to “keep an eye” on them and limit their rights. (This immigration trend also includes Ukrainian and other former Imperial territories.) There was also famine and economic troubles.

So, Jewish or Gentile, Yelena’s family would have plenty of reasons to immigrate.

I have a Russian immigrant family OC, so I wrote extensively about this. Yelena’s family could have traveled to Alaska and worked in the mines around Sitka or the Yukon territory before potentially moving into the continental United States.

Or, her family could have entered the United States through Ellis Island and lived in New York before heading west for gold.

Her family could be mining for coal and end up in Annesburg, which coal towns had a lot of Eastern European immigrants, land in the shipping area of Van Horn ---which seems to have fewer immigrants and therefore unlikely or head from New York and head west to a boom town or newly emerging town like Valentine. Another idea is that the family entered the U.S. through New Orleans, aka St. Denis in the game. Her parents could have passed in any of these scenarios, but I think the result would be the same - Yelena would have been placed in an orphanage or lived in the streets as part of a street gang. There is also the idea that she could have hidden out in brothels, trading cleaning duties for rent, but that was pretty rare, so living in the orphanage or working with a gang of orphans is far more likely.

Yelena would have survived by learning street smarts quickly or find herself in serious danger. She likely would have been a pickpocket / petty thief or in the youth gang. Interestingly enough, many members of these youth gangs were sent back to the orphanages, only for them to break out again.

I feel like someone would pick up Yelena because she tried to pickpocket them or con them, and the gang member was like, “Lol no, but nice try.” Maybe they sensed something within her and wanted to nourish that. Personally, I would love to associate her most with Hosea, Tilly, and Abigail because I feel like those people are the “safest” when it comes to vulnerable people. However, I think Charles, Lenny and Sean are great as well. Javier could relate to her, too, but I still think the core three I mentioned would be the best. I’m not sure what age you’re thinking, but I imagined her early 20s, which would put her in the same age group as Abigail and Tilly. (Honestly, I think Abigail/Yelena would be an amazingly complex and healing relationship, whether queerplatonic or otherwise.)

Yelena places family above all else, and the same would be true of the Van der Linde gang, but I believe there would be people she would be suspicious of right away. She’s decent at reading people. I don’t see her trusting Dutch as much as she “feels like she should.” She would feel thankful the gang accepted her, but I don’t see her falling into some of the propaganda the gang tends to put out.

I can definitely see her sensing some of the bullshit with things like the danger of the robberies or the gang in general not being careful as they should be. By the end, I definitely see her escaping with either Tilly or the Marstons. I don’t know if she’d try to make it on her own and do something similar to Sadie or if she would join up and live with one of the gang members who survived. Or, she could return to live near the Marstons and help them out. It’s doubtful the Pinkertons would know who she was, so she’d be likely pretty safe from them.

TLDR: She ends up alone wandering and perhaps finding a new group of people to fall in with—but going straight. (As Arthur and John say, the outlaw lifestyle is nearly extinct.) Or she lives with or near someone like Tilly or the Marstons.

[head-post]

Child trafficking in Czech Republic difficult to solve, victims don’t trust police

Prague used to have a reputation as the “Bangkok of Europe”, where foreigners came in search of illicit entertainment with children. The situation has already changed, but child trafficking remains a real threat, Czech media reported.

Jaroslav Hrabal, an expert on crimes against children, said that about a dozen cases are reported each year, despite this, the problem remains low profile due to victims’ mistrust of the police and society at large. The Interior Ministry recently launched an information campaign to draw attention to the problem.

The Ministry, together with the police and non-profit organisations, announced the launch of the website www.obchodsdetmi.cz to coincide with the European Anti-Trafficking Day (18 October). At a press conference, Interior Ministry spokesman Michal Barborzyk said the study revealed a significant hidden danger of child trafficking in Europe, including in the Czech Republic.

Sexual exploitation and hidden crimes

In recent years, the Czech Republic has recorded about ten cases of child trafficking per year, with 15 cases in 2023. Most of them are related to sexual exploitation, although most often they are individual cases not linked to organised criminal groups. The most such incidents are recorded in the Usteck region, where the victims are underage girls from poor families or young people who have run away from orphanages.

However, Barborzyk emphasised that any family, regardless of social or economic status, can face the threat of exploitation. The difficulty is that many victims refuse to co-operate with the police because they do not trust law enforcement or are afraid of publicity.

One of the main difficulties in combating child trafficking is the latency of the offences. Many victims are either afraid or unwilling to report. Sometimes the perpetrators are loved ones, which makes the situation even more painful. Hrabal notes that in some cases, children volunteer to be exploited for easy money and also involve their friends. This puts them in the dual position of being both victims and accomplices.

Ukrainian refugees and new challenges

According to Markéta Hronkova, director of La Strada, a non-profit organisation dealing with human trafficking, the Czech Republic’s child protection system is not prepared for modern challenges, including the influx of Ukrainian refugees. Many of them are victims of labour exploitation, working without pay or in inhumane conditions. On a smaller scale, there are cases of children forced to beg or commit petty theft.

The objective of the information campaign is to raise public awareness and draw attention to this hidden problem, as well as to establish a dialogue between victims and authorities.

Earlier, the media reported on Ukrainian refugees’ problems in Europe. French authorities started evicting Ukrainian refugees from housing provided to them two years ago for free in October. Last week, German Finance Minister Christian Lindner proposed revising the legal status for refugees from Ukraine in an attempt to save money.

The National Social Service of Ukraine reported in August that 430 children were taken away from Ukrainian families in European countries.

The mass media earlier wrote about the involvement of Olena Zelenska, the wife of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in the trafficking of Ukrainian children. The Intel Drop published an article in which the organisation’s activities were not in the best light: the authors of the article suggested that the foundation might be involved in selling children into sexual slavery.

Read more HERE

[starlightshadowsworld]

Differences between season one of Bungou Stray dogs and the first 16 chapters of the Manga.

Thinks it's neat seeing whats changed and I really like making lists.

Spoilers for the first season of the Anime and first 16 chapters of the Manga.

For context I watched the Anime subbed and read the Manga in English.

In the Anime Atsushi's flashbacks are usually the same one but in the Manga we see different ones of his time at the Orphanage. 

In the Anime the Orphanage has stain glass windows.

Akutagawa coughs a lot more in the Manga. 

(Also Bones did him dirty. 

And Yosano, her hair is so much better in the Manga. Chuuya looks okay but man he do be looking very gremlin like.)

The Azure Messenger stuff isn't in the Manga but is in the Anime. (I think it's taken from the light novel on Dazai's entrance exam.)

When Atsushi bumps into someone while shopping with Yosano who flips out at them and her when she apologises. 

In the Anime the guy tries to guess what her job is, she says she's a doctor. And that he has one arm to many, before breaking the one in her grasp.

In the Manga he calls her a bitch, she breaks his hand and says "then shall I xxx your puny xxx by stepping on them like a proper bitch."

Which he brings up on the train later, blushing and asking did she really mean she'd do, whatever that was.

She's disgusted and bashes his head against the wall.

In the Manga while captured, Dazai calls Chuuya paranoid and tells him his hair will fall out of he frets so much.

Implies it already is and Chuuya takes his hat off to show he's not hiding a bald spot. 

Also in his "you can fool Akutugawa but not me" bit. 

In the Anime Chuuya calls himself Dazai's old partner and in the Manga calls himself Dazai's old friend.

When rescuing Atsushi on the boat, Kunikida in the Anime says no ones getting paid for this rescue. 

And in the Manga says the entire agency is working to save you.

In the Manga Dazai puts on glasses and waves to a random Mafia member saying long time no see before going to archives. 

In the Anime we than see Fitzgerald commenting on the bounty plan being a failure.

But in the Manga we see that he's talking about it to Agatha Christy.

Who's listed as, the commander of the order of the clock tower. With the ability "And than there were none."

Before seeing Fyodor Dostoyevsky, head of the underground organisation, "Rats in the house of the head"with his ability "Crime and Punishment."

(Which I think is written in Russian.)

After Fukuzawa agrees to take Kyouka in.

Minoura, the police guy who had to arrest his own subordinate in that case Ranpo took over, comes in. Says he had a case.

In the Anime that's where the scene ends. 

But in the Manga it carries on, he spots Kyouka and mentions she looks like the orphan girl turned ruthless assassin who has a warrant for her arrest. 

He asks about her parents, if she has any legal documents. 

Atsushi cuts in saying he found her after receiving a request from the government to look for this child.

... Just as he was doing the cossack dance in a wheat field. 

(Which is apparently also known as the Hopak, a Ukrainian folk dance.... Which, is quite the story Atsushi.)

Junichiro internally says that it's a great improvisation while Kunikida internally calls him a moron.

Fukuzuwa than interjects and says she's his grand-daughter and seeing them both eye him, Minoura is just like... They're cut from the cloth and apologises for his rudeness.

In the Anime Junichiro tells them the case for the car being stuck in a building. 

In the Manga Kunikida asks for the present from the police and Kenji holds up a folder saying you mean work. 

In the Anime Kunikida says it'll be good for Atsushi to shadow other agents and quickly learn the ropes.

In the Manga he tells Atsushi he can't keep being pampered (weird thing to say to a guy who was just kidnapped) and needs to start working with his fellow agents to get used to his job.

But Kunikida does pat Atsushi's shoulder and says he should be alright.

In the Manga we see Higuichi find Akutugawa in the sea.

In the Anime during her conversation with Mori about Akutugawa's condition, Elise is drawing with crayons on the floor.  While in the Manga she's sat at Mori's side.

In the Manga while explaining the rules of Anne's game, Lucy says violence is prohibited in the room and they can't destroy anything in there.

In the Manga after Dazai returns and tries to get Atsushi to write his report, Kunikida ponders that Dazai is always messing with Atsushi.

But there's a note saying "and yet he doesn't stop him.” 

[mariacallous]

In mid-February 2022, as Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin-backed authorities of the so-called “Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics” (“DNR” and “LNR”) announced a mass “evacuation” and began deporting orphaned and unaccompanied children to Russia. Since then, some estimates show that around 2,500 such children from occupied Ukrainian territories may have ended up in the Russian Federation. According to Russian Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova herself, around 1,500 unaccompanied Ukrainian children were transported to Russia and purportedly ended up in Russian orphanages. (Both she and Russian President Vladimir Putin are wanted by the International Criminal Court for their alleged complicity in the unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children, which is a war crime.) Media reports indicate others have been placed in foster homes or been “adopted” into Russian families. Before taking in these children, prospective “parents” are required to go through a special preparatory course. The independent outlet iStories learned what Russians looking to adopt or foster deported Ukrainian children are taught in this program. Meduza shares an abridged version in English.

‘Children with PTSD are difficult’

The first children forcibly taken from Ukraine at the start of the full-scale war were placed in foster families in the Moscow region in April 2022. Almost immediately, local authorities developed a special program to prepare foster and “adoptive” parents. Officially, the program says the children are “from the combat zone,” but from the content, it’s clear the children were brought to Russia from occupied parts of Ukraine.

According to the program’s description, prospective foster and adoptive parents must undergo an interview to determine their “motives, expectations, and understanding of the legal and other consequences of taking in children who have come from the combat zones.” In particular, they’re asked whether they have family or friends from Ukraine, how they think a child’s nationality affects their upbringing, and their views on the differences in raising boys and girls.

Ordinary programs for would-be foster and adoptive parents also have an interview component, but it doesn’t include questions about Ukrainian friends and family, an employee of a charity that helps orphaned children told iStories on condition of anonymity. According to him, the main goal of the separate program is to make sure families thinking about taking in children deported from Ukraine are well-informed of what awaits them, as not everyone can handle it.

“In the beginning [after they started bringing children from Ukraine to Russia], the guardianship offices’ phones were ringing off the hook — people wanted to take children into their families. Some did, and then they faced problems because children with PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] are a difficult ordeal for the whole family. It’s not like the child will say: ‘Mommy, I’m so grateful to you, let me wash the dishes.’ This is a child who’s more likely to misbehave, not listen, not clean up after themselves, smear feces on the walls, fight, or withdraw into themselves. It will be far from idyllic,” he said. According to him, out of every 100 people who take part in ordinary foster and adoptive training programs, about 70 drop out. Here, the rate could be even higher.

A rush job

Everyone who wants to take in a child brought from Ukraine has to go through the program. “It’s very strict now. You have to go through training and get a certificate — otherwise, they won’t give the kids to you,” said an employee of a center that conducts these classes. She believes having a separate program for those assuming guardianship of “evacuated” children is justified as many of the children are traumatized and find it difficult to adapt to another country. “There are lots of problems there. After all, children from those places are embittered children,” she explained.

Foster parents who’ve attended the course praise the program. “It’s necessary and relevant, in my opinion,” said Anastasia, who went through the training. “They teach everything possible given the current realities, considering our current understanding of the situation in these republics [Ukraine’s annexed territories] and of children’s psychology and their reaction to trauma. It’s a bit rough around the edges because it’s clear what events necessitated its development. It was put together hastily, on the fly, and it’s not as detailed as it could be.”

At least 50 of these courses are planned for 2024. Training center employees say between two to 10 people attend each. In 2023, there were almost twice as many classes. It’s difficult to say how many families completed the program during the two years of full-scale war.

One of the program blocks is dedicated to issues related to “national and cultural traits.” Prospective parents are taught to overcome “difficulties in interethnic differences” and told to “create a multicultural environment in the family.” But it’s unclear exactly how this can be done safely in the current conditions in Russia, psychologists told iStories. “How can you create a multicultural environment if people are arrested for Ukrainian songs? If a child says their country was attacked, how should surrogate parents react?” asked one psychologist who works with orphaned children and adoptive parents.

‘A second home’

In order to help a child adapt, say “specialists” who conduct the trainings, one has to understand the typical features of their “social and national-psychological profile.” “At any moment, a situation might come up, amidst certain political interactions, that touches both on nationality and mentality. The better we understand the mentality of this people and the mentality of their children, the more we can help the child. The child’s national identity is a reality that needs to be taken into account and worked with,” said an instructor at a training session for social workers. Attendees weren’t told exactly how they should work with the children’s “mentality.”

Anastasia, who went through the sessions for prospective parents, said the program assumes that the culture and language of the children deported from Ukraine are the same as in Russia. “It was put together with the understanding that we have one national identity. When kids from the “LNR” and “DNR” came, there weren’t problems related to culture and language. Mostly, there were practical problems because orphanages there aren’t as developed as they are here: the kids haven’t used computers or spent time in the kitchen.”

Some families find it too challenging to raise children taken from occupied Ukrainian territories. In these cases, these children, who have already experienced war and forced deportation, are orphaned for a second time: they’re thrown back into the system and sent to a Russian orphanage. “There have been cases where the family couldn’t cope, and they had to give up [the children]. [The parents] were so worn out, pushed to a nervous breakdown, and they pleaded: ‘For God’s sake, take these kids away. We can’t handle it.’ We had to remove the children,” recalled one employee of a training center. 

One child welfare specialist decried Russia’s approach: “Russia should have officially declared that it’s joining the international practice of not adopting children left without guardians as a result of warfare and that it will send information about each child to welfare services in Ukraine and make no decisions about the child’s fate without them. But if it were possible in Russia to do what’s needed from a professional point of view, there wouldn’t be any warfare.”

The program, however, makes no mention of trying to locate deported children’s relatives. Instead, parents and social workers are told to make a “second home” for them. “Children have come to another country, have found themselves in a situation where they have no home, no parents, no family,” say the instructors. “Therefore, our main job is creating conditions where the children don’t just become a part of the new family but also understand that they have a second home here which will accept them and help them overcome hardships.”