I WANT TO TELL YOU SOMETHING that feels impossible to explain.
But Iโll try, because youโve always listened. And you deserve to know whatโs happening.
Something historic is unfolding right now.
Not symbolic or subtle. Itโs completely historic.
A shift. A crack in the order of things.
And because youโve stayed with me all this time, I want you to feel it with me.
This weekend, more than 30 regions inside Russia heard air raid sirens.
Actual sirens. Not drills. Not warnings.
The real sound. The sound that changes your body before it reaches your ears:
This sound above has belonged to every Ukrainian life for three years.
To our children, our hospitals, our schools.
Our mothers who run to basements with trembling hands.
We know it too well.
And now, they are learning, because Ukraine has reached them.
We are striking military targets inside their own territory, thousands of miles from us.
Strategically. Precisely. On purpose.

Weโve been preparing this for over a year and a half. Our President said so himself.
And unlike Putin, he doesnโt say things like that unless itโs real.
This is not revenge. This is resistance.
And itโs working.
We are making the so-called โsecond army of the worldโ feel what they once believed theyโd never feel.
Vulnerability.
And for the first time, I believe we are witnessing something more powerful than fire.
We are witnessing the limits of fear.
Because fear doesnโt work forever.
You can bomb, threaten, torture, lie. You can steal the land and rename the towns.
But if the people you are trying to erase still rise in the morning, still write, still build, still pray, still resist, then you have already lost.
I am not celebrating death.
I am not asking for vengeance.
But I would be lying if I told you I didnโt feel something when I knew that those sirens were echoing across Russian cities.
Because for years, we had no way to fight back.
And now, for the first time, we are not only surviving: we are reaching.
We are reaching fuel depots, radar systems, military installations they said were untouchable.
And weโre doing it from a country they swore would collapse in three days.
We were supposed to fall.
We were supposed to be a warning.
But now the warning belongs to them.
Let every one of their 80 or so regions, spread across 10 or so time zones, hear the sound that used to belong only to us.
Let them sit in the dark, wondering if morning will come, or if silence will be broken by a missile or a miracle.
Not because I hate them.
I do hate, sure, but thatโs not the point here.
What I want most is for them to understand and to feel something.
To understand what they did and allowed to happen.
To understand and feel what it means to live with no control over your own sky.
To feel exactly what it means to wake up through smoke and ash and silence not knowing if youโre alive or dead.
I am still here.
My country is still here.
We didnโt kneel. We didnโt give up our cities, our dignity, or our future.
And now, something is shifting.
Weโve gone from desperate to dangerous.
From wounded to awake.
And if you ask me where we are in this war, I will tell you:
We are closer to victory than weโve ever been.
Not because of weapons or politics.
But because we are still alive
And we still believe in something worth fighting for.
I know this may sound unbelievable, but you believed in us before.
When we had nothing. When we had no chance.
And now that we have a real one, I need you to believe again.
Because if Ukraine wins, then every decent person in this world wins with us.
If we fall, they will try again.
In Moldova. In the Baltics. In Poland. Probably even where you are.
But if we win, the sirens go quiet.
Not just here.
Everywhere.
So this wasnโt just a moment in the war, but a moment in your story, too.
This breakthrough is real, but itโs not yet irreversible. And we need every drop of belief to carry it further.
So I ask you to remember these last days.
When the silence in Ukraine meant the sirens were finally somewhere else.
When fear crossed the border for the first time.
And when, after all these years, we stopped being the only ones afraid.
History will remember this weekend not as a moment of escalation, but as the moment everything started to shift.
To all those who said Ukraine was too small, too poor, too broken, too tiredโฆlook again.
Because weโre not broken.
Weโre breaking through.
Thereโs more to say, but not tonight.
Stay with me.
Slava Ukraini.
๐บ๐ฆ
๐ This journal is and will always be free to read. But it only survives because some readers choose to support it with a paid subscription. If thatโs something you feel ready for, thank you more than I can say.
๐ โThe Divine Comedian: Ukraineโs Journey Through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradiseโ is my first book: about Ukraine, seen from inside the fire, and the hope that refuses to die. Download it for free (PDF & Kindle).
You all have done well and given hope to the entire world. Thank you!
I feel so proud of the people of Ukraine!!