Prometheus: Bringing Ukrainian Defense Innovation to Capitol Hill

Published: October 16, 2026

At Razom’s Washington, D.C., office, Ukrainian innovators and American policymakers explored the technologies reshaping modern security and the opportunities for deeper U.S.-Ukraine cooperation.

Ukraine’s experience defending itself against Russia’s full-scale invasion is transforming how the world understands modern warfare. Ukrainian engineers, trainers, and innovators are developing and adapting technologies at remarkable speed, drawing on lessons learned directly from the front lines. These innovations have implications far beyond Ukraine, offering important insights into the future of unmanned systems, emerging security threats, and international defense cooperation.

To bring that expertise directly to American decision-makers, Razom for Ukraine’s Advocacy Team convened and hosted Prometheus, an interactive defense innovation showcase at its Capitol Hill office in Washington, D.C., earlier this month.

Organized in partnership with the Embassy of Ukraine in the United States, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), Liberty Ukraine, Accshellerator, Ukraine’s Boryviter Centre of Excellence, and Truth Hounds, the event welcomed more than 100 congressional staffers, executive branch officials, national security experts, and Ukrainian innovators.

“Out of necessity, Ukrainian engineers have developed inexpensive technologies that are being deployed in weeks, challenging weapons systems worth millions of dollars. Ukraine is at the forefront of this transformation, and the United States has much to learn from its experience. One of Razom’s central objectives was to build support for a formal U.S.-Ukraine working group to facilitate cooperation on unmanned systems,” said Daniel Balson, Director of Razom Advocacy.

A Hands-On Look at Ukrainian Innovation

Prometheus gave participants an opportunity to experience Ukrainian technology firsthand and speak with the people developing and using it. Guests took the controls of first-person-view (FPV) drone simulators, examined Ukrainian drone models, explored battlefield logistics software, and learned about rapidly evolving technologies designed to counter unmanned threats. The demonstrations illustrated how quickly Ukraine’s innovation ecosystem has evolved under the pressures of war.

Ukrainian engineers, entrepreneurs, and frontline professionals have developed ways to adapt relatively inexpensive technologies to challenges traditionally addressed by far more costly systems. In some cases, technologies can be modified and deployed in weeks, or even days, to meet rapidly changing needs.

For the American policymakers in attendance, the opportunity to engage directly with Ukrainian innovators brought those developments into sharper focus. The showcase created space for technical questions, practical demonstrations, and conversations about what Ukraine’s experience can teach its international partners.

What Ukraine’s Experience Means for Global Security

A fireside conversation featuring Rear Admiral (Ret.) Mark Montgomery and Shashank Joshi of The Economist explored the broader implications of Ukraine’s experience for the future of warfare and American security.

As unmanned technologies evolve, Ukraine’s experience offers insights into how quickly security challenges can change and how institutions can adapt to emerging threats. The discussion reinforced one of the event’s central themes: Ukraine’s knowledge and experience can make a meaningful contribution to its partnerships with the United States. Ukraine has become an important source of practical expertise in unmanned systems, and sustained cooperation offers both countries opportunities to learn from that experience.

From Innovation to Lasting Cooperation

Prometheus also highlighted an opportunity to translate these exchanges into more structured collaboration: H.R. 9550, the Strategic Unmanned Systems Partnership Act, proposes strengthening U.S.-Ukraine cooperation in the development, production, and acquisition of next-generation unmanned systems. The proposal reflects the broader policy conversation surrounding the showcase: how the United States and Ukraine can build on Ukraine’s technological expertise through sustained cooperation.

For Razom’s Advocacy team, bringing Ukrainian experts into direct conversation with American policymakers is an important part of that process. The team connects decision-makers with credible information, Ukrainian perspectives, and opportunities for policy engagement.

Keeping Ukrainian Expertise at the Center

The success of Prometheus depended on the expertise and collaboration of many partners.

Razom extends special thanks to the Embassy of Ukraine in the United States and Chargé d’Affaires Denys Sienik for participating, and to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Liberty Ukraine, Accshellerator, Boryviter Centre of Excellence, and Truth Hounds for helping bring the showcase together.

We are also grateful to the Ukrainian engineers, trainers, and innovators who shared their knowledge and demonstrated technologies shaped by years of extraordinary challenges.

The event represents one part of Razom’s broader commitment to strengthening understanding of Ukraine in Washington and supporting relationships that recognize Ukraine’s experience, capabilities, and leadership.

Thanks to Razom’s supporters, we can continue bringing Ukrainian expertise to the people and institutions shaping important decisions, helping create opportunities for deeper understanding and lasting partnerships.

Razom for Ukraine: You Cannot Put America First While Buying Russian Diesel

Published: October 9, 2026

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Razom for Ukraine: You Cannot Put America First While Buying Russian Diesel

Washington, D.C., October 9, 2026 — Razom for Ukraine expresses its unequivocal opposition to President Trump’s decision to allow nearly 5 million tons of Russian diesel to enter the American and global market. “Every dollar America spends on Russian diesel is a dollar that Putin uses to kill Ukrainians in hospitals, schools, and shelters,” said Daniel Balson, Director of Advocacy at Razom.

Just three weeks ago, the President signed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act to pressure other countries to end their dependence on Russian energy. Today’s decision undermines that effort, runs counter to the President’s stated goal of ending the war, and defies the bipartisan intent of that bill.

“Instead of increasing pressure on Russia’s energy sector, President Trump’s announcement is giving the Russian dictator an economic lifeline as his forces falter on the battlefield,” added Daniel Balson.

“The American people across the political spectrum support more economic pressure on Russia. According to the February 2026 Harvard CAPS / Harris poll, 66% of Americans say President Trump should impose further economic sanctions on Russia. You cannot put America first while buying Russian diesel.

Yesterday, Russia bombed two buses in the Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, killing 33 people. The day before, Russia bombed an apartment building in Pryluky, killing 22, including children. Russian oil money bankrolls these crimes. President Trump says he wants to save lives. The decision to buy Russian diesel undercuts that goal,” said Balson.

Razom for Ukraine calls on President Trump to rescind this decision and urges members of Congress to explore every available legislative and oversight mechanism to reverse it.

The Headlines Feel Familiar. What’s Happening in Ukraine Is Getting Worse.

Published: October 1, 2026

“Now, new jet-powered Shaheds are so fast that even the Telegram channels you rely on can’t warn you in time,” Hanna, Operations Manager for Razom’s mental health program, shares. “Before, there were a few hours of quiet. Now, non-stop exhaustion without sleep affects everything.”

Every day across Ukraine, people are still going to work, taking care of their families, running businesses, teaching children, treating patients, and helping their communities through another day of war. This is what keeps the country functioning, even as the conditions around them become increasingly difficult.

After more than four years of full-scale war, another headline about an attack on Ukraine can be easy to scroll past. Some of our colleagues have even heard people abroad ask whether the war is still going on.

The reality is the opposite of a war fading away. In the first eight months of 2026, the UN recorded more civilian casualties in Ukraine than during all of 2025.

But numbers tell only part of the story. What can look from abroad like another week of “war in Ukraine” is, in everyday life, a humanitarian crisis that reaches far beyond the front line. A destroyed business means more than a damaged building. A strike on a medical warehouse means supplies may never reach the patients waiting for them. When a school, hospital, communications network, or workplace is hit, the consequences continue long after the attack disappears from the news.

At Razom, we see those consequences through our own colleagues, grantees, and partners across Ukraine. They are treating patients, delivering aid, supporting communities, running organizations, and building for the future while navigating the same attacks as everyone around them. And over the past weeks, doing that work has become even harder.

The people behind the headlines

Kyiv has faced repeated attacks throughout September. On September 25, a Russian strike hit the Compass FM business center during the workday. Among those killed was journalist Mariia Ivzhenko, the wife of Danylo Ivzhenko, who is currently serving with Ukraine’s Third Army Corps. We know Danylo through his work with Razom on tourniquet training and other medical education initiatives in Ukraine. He is trained to save lives on the front line, yet this war reached his own family far from it. In a public post after Mariia’s death, Danylo shared that they had recently bought an apartment and were planning to start a family this winter. Our deepest condolences go to Danylo, Mariia’s family, and everyone who knew and loved her.

Three days later, on September 28, Russian attacks hit two more places at the center of civilian life in Kyiv. A Russian drone struck the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, killing people while they were at work inside. Later that day, another strike hit a Dobrobut medical center, damaging the clinic and injuring patients and staff.

A scientific institution. A medical center. A business. Homes, schools, warehouses, and communications infrastructure. These are not places on a distant front line. They are the places where Ukrainians work, learn, receive care, and try to live their lives.

For our colleagues in Kyiv, these are not distant news stories. They are people they know, streets they travel, workplaces they pass, and neighborhoods where their families and friends live.

The growing pressure on Ukrainian businesses

There is another part of this story that receives less attention: the growing pressure on the businesses and infrastructure that keep Ukraine functioning.

In August, the UN documented 32 attacks against facilities belonging to six major Ukrainian food, retail, and logistics companies, nearly three times the number recorded in July. Warehouses and distribution centers have been damaged, disrupting the systems Ukrainians depend on for food, deliveries, jobs, and everyday services.

For Razom, we see another consequence through our partners on the ground.

Ukrainian businesses have been important donors to civil society organizations providing essential relief and recovery services in their communities. Our partners are telling us that as businesses are hit and lose revenue, some of that support is disappearing too, putting funding for critical programs under pressure.

A damaged business affects its employees and their families, the local economy, the organizations it supports, and ultimately the people who depend on those organizations.

The same is true for humanitarian and medical infrastructure. In only three months this summer, airstrikes destroyed three warehouses used by the World Health Organization, including a Dnipro facility where half of the medical supplies and equipment intended to support approximately 225,000 people in frontline and hard-to-reach communities were lost. At least 20 attacks have affected warehouses storing humanitarian supplies in Ukraine so far this year.

This is what a humanitarian crisis looks like beyond the immediate moment of an attack: the systems designed to help people survive and recover are themselves placed under enormous pressure.

Oleshky: Hell on Earth Under Russian Occupation

The pressure on civilian life is not limited to the cities and infrastructure being hit by Russian attacks. In Russian-occupied Oleshky in Kherson Oblast, the same humanitarian crisis has reached an extreme.

Civilians, including children, are trapped without sufficient food, medicine, medical care, running water, or electricity. The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights has warned that residents face a high risk of death and called for humanitarian access and safe evacuation.

With conventional humanitarian access severely restricted, Ukrainian defenders are still trying to reach those trapped there. In one recent operation, Ukrainian forces used drones to deliver around four tons of food and medicine to 100 locations across Oleshky.

Oleshky shows the humanitarian catastrophe Russia’s war and occupation have created in its most extreme form: people cut off from the basic conditions they need to survive. And it is happening right now, alongside the attacks on homes, businesses, hospitals, schools, and infrastructure across Ukraine.

This is what gets lost when all of it becomes simply “the war in Ukraine.”

Ukrainians are still doing the work

And still, life continues. Doctors go to work after sleepless nights. Businesses reopen after attacks. Teachers keep classrooms running, volunteers keep aid moving, and communities continue taking care of one another. But Ukrainians should not be expected to endlessly adapt to destruction. Resilience is not protection, and it cannot replace the support people need to keep going.

For Razom, that is why responding to the immediate crisis and investing in Ukraine’s future have always been connected. We help provide urgent humanitarian and medical support while strengthening the people, organizations, and communities that will carry Ukraine forward.

The international community has tools to act. The recently enacted Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act gives the United States additional authorities to increase economic pressure on Russia and those helping finance its war. These tools must be used to their fullest extent. Contact your representatives in Congress and urge them to call on the White House to increase pressure on Russia and ensure continued support for Ukraine.

Ukrainians are already doing the work: saving lives, keeping businesses open, caring for their communities, and building a future in Ukraine. What they need now is not for the world to admire their resilience, but to stand behind it.

Join us. Support Ukraine.

Ukrainian Culture Takes Center Stage in New York

Published: September 28, 2026

A look behind the scenes of the Ukrainian Cultural Festival, and why showing up matters.

“October is Ukrainian culture month,” we’ve heard around New York City over the past few years. And for us, that is one of the clearest signs of what Razom’s Ukrainian Cultural Festival (UCF) has become.

This is our fourth year, and in 2026 we are reaching new stages, new audiences, and new partners across the city. As producers curating performing arts programming for Razom for Ukraine, we get to see the vision come to life each year, from our very first brainstorming sessions to the final moments when the theater and venues are restored to their original forms and everything gets quiet again.

This year, we have the privilege of partnering with the Alexander & Buono Foundation to open the festival at Carnegie Hall with the US premiere of Ukrainian composer Oleg Bezborodko’s Steel, Violet, Rage, performed by the Shelest Piano Duo (Anna and Dmitri Shelest) alongside the Brandywine Symphony Orchestra from the greater Philadelphia region.

The title of the piano concerto alone tells a story. Steel evokes Azovstal, the vast steelworks in Mariupol that became a place of extraordinary resistance during the siege of the city in 2022, and with it the endurance and heroism of its defenders. Violet comes from the final poem of Ukrainian poet and soldier Maksym Kryvtsov, killed in action in 2024. And Rage needs little explanation.

But this is not a concert about the war. It is Ukrainian contemporary music, including a piece by the Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov, performed alongside works by the legendary American composers Philip Glass and Samuel Barber.

By design, UCF is a rare opportunity to bring extraordinary Ukrainian talent to New York as artists whose work belongs in the city’s cultural life, without reducing it to the current devastation of war. This is one of the reasons we’re proud to work tirelessly on the festival each year and see it receive the recognition it deserves.

Over three weeks, starting October 18 through November 6, audiences will encounter Ukrainian cinema, literature, theater, and classical music performances. We are partnering with established cultural institutions such as QUAD Cinema, DCTV’s Firehouse Cinema, The Public Theater, Teatro LATEA, the New York Public Library, Poets House and more.

For us, this expansion in partnerships and locations is one of the most exhilarating parts. It proves the point: Ukrainian art should not exist only in Ukrainian spaces as it belongs in the wider cultural landscape of New York.

Stories On Stage

One of the performances we’re particularly looking forward to is The Reckoning: Selected Scenes and Conversation by Dash Arts, a New York preview of verbatim theater based on verified survivor testimony from russia’s war in Ukraine.

It tells the story of one man who remained in his village outside Kyiv when others fled. The performance will be followed by a conversation between London-based director Josephine Burton and Peter Pomerantsev, co-founder of The Reckoning Project, about the testimony behind the work and the documentation of war crimes.

Our festival becomes the springboard for further exploration and workshopping of this piece ahead of its US tour in 2027. Praised as “powerful and important” and “brilliant, sharp stage craft” in the UK, the production comes to UCF with US-based Ukrainian actors Petro Ninovskyi and Sasha Odesa.

At the festival, we not only bring Ukrainian artists’ work to New York, but also showcase American talent working on Ukrainian stories. Playwright Richard Nelson’s new play, More Beauty Than Sorrow, created in Kyiv, looks at Lesia Ukrainka and her family through their everyday lives rather than through the usual monumental portrait of a national literary figure. The festivalgoers will be able to see the production that was created in Ukraine in a film screening at The Public Theater.

A Full Circle

This year, the festival closes where it started – with a return to Carnegie Hall with Unbreakable Harmony, bringing together the Kyiv Lysenko State Music Lyceum Chamber Girls’ Choir and the Westchester Children’s Chorus.

They will perform Ukrainian and American music, songs about peace and community, and, finally, Shchedryk – the Ukrainian melody better known in the US as Carol of the Bells.

This carries a specific meaning: Shchedryk was first performed for American audiences at Carnegie Hall in 1921. More than a century later, Ukrainian children will sing it there again.

Artists need audiences and culture survives by staying alive in people’s minds and hearts.

Artists need not only donations and support, but also the chance to connect and be together in a room with audiences during these very challenging times.

You may come because you want to support Ukraine, but you may leave having discovered a composer, actor, filmmaker, or story you knew nothing about.

And that is the beauty of something we can’t live without: culture. And this year, we have some spectacular moments of Ukrainian culture to witness together.

We hope you’ll join us.

Rachel Shuey and Viktorija Mickute, UCF Producers

Razom Applauds Final Passage of the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia & Iran Act

Published: September 17, 2026

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Razom Applauds Final Passage of the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia & Iran Act

Washington, D.C., September 16, 2026 — Razom is grateful to every member of Congress who supported the bipartisan Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act, an important step toward strengthening Ukraine and increasing pressure on Moscow.

“The bipartisan passage of this bill is nothing short of momentous,” said Daniel Balson, Director of Advocacy at Razom for Ukraine. “This is the first piece of stand-alone, pro-Ukraine legislation to make it through Congress in two years. It comes as Russian officials move towards full-scale mobilization and intensify their bombing campaign against Ukraine’s critical energy infrastructure. This bill sends an unmistakable message: for so long as Putin continues to inflict suffering on Ukraine, Congress will continue to impose consequences on Putin.”

“The measures contained in this bill will hit Putin where it hurts most. They will strike at the heart of his war machine, weaken his economy, and target those who continue to bankroll the Kremlin by importing Russian energy,” added Balson. “Countries around the world have a choice: they can finance Putin’s war or they can enjoy access to the U.S. market but not both.”

The House passage followed an overwhelming 86–11 vote in the Senate. Together, these bipartisan votes reflect a broad demand from Americans across the political spectrum for stronger U.S. sanctions and greater pressure on Putin’s murderous regime.

“The Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act provides the administration with a powerful set of tools to save lives in Ukraine,” said Daniel Balson. “We encourage President Trump to swiftly sign this bill into law and move quickly to make full use of the new tools at his disposal.”

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Razom for Ukraine and the American Literary Translators Association

Published: August 26, 2026

Razom for Ukraine and the American Literary Translators Association

Announce Joint Venture

August 26, 2026—Razom for Ukraine and the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) are excited to announce the establishment of two new programs. Through this new partnership, ALTA will administer the Razom Mentorship for Decolonial Translation and the Razom Ukrainian Translation Award.

“This partnership with ALTA marks an important step in building lasting infrastructure for Ukrainian literature in translation,” said Anna Solovei, Interim Connect Program Director at Razom for Ukraine. “Ukrainian voices have too often been filtered through frameworks that obscure or diminish them. By centering decolonial approaches to translation and investing in both emerging and established translators, we hope to help create a more accurate, more resonant space for Ukrainian—and other historically marginalized—literatures in English. We’re grateful to ALTA for their partnership and expertise in bringing these programs to life.”

“We’re delighted to enter into partnership with Razom for Ukraine, whose work we so admire, to offer this mentorship and award,” said ALTA Executive Director Katrine Øgaard Jensen. “We’re humbled by the trust shown in our organization to administer these new programs: one to foster the next generation of literary translators, and one to recognize the excellent work of our colleagues. We are excited to begin work on these initiatives.”

The Razom Mentorship for Decolonial Translation will foster emerging literary translators working with literature from historically marginalized regions and languages, through a dedicated mentorship stream that pairs emerging translators with experienced mentors, with a different regional or language focus each year. This mentorship will be offered annually starting in 2027. Applications for the first year of this mentorship, which will offer a focus on Ukrainian-language literature with mentor Dominique Hoffman, open next week, on September 1, 2026.

The Razom Ukrainian Translation Award will sustain and recognize excellence in literary translation from Ukrainian and other languages of Ukraine into English. This award will be judged and awarded annually starting in 2027. Submissions will open, alongside the other awards ALTA administers, in mid-January 2027.

Razom for Ukraine is a leading U.S.-based nonprofit organization working to build a secure, democratic, and prosperous Ukraine. Founded in 2014, Razom (“together” in Ukrainian) supports urgent needs in Ukraine while investing in long-term solutions across health, civil society, advocacy, and culture. As Ukraine’s future has global implications, Razom strengthens trauma care systems, supports local leaders and communities, and connects Ukraine to the world. For more information, visit razomforukraine.org.

The American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) is a nonprofit arts membership association that provides programs and professional affiliation to the literary translation community: individual translators, academic institutions, presses, and others working in literary translation. The annual ALTA conference and year-round events are structured around the creation of high-quality art. ALTA also administers awards to recognize excellence in translation and provides fellowships and mentorships to support emerging translators. For more information, visit literarytranslators.org.

Razom for Ukraine Announces Fourth Annual Ukrainian Cultural Festival, Opening with US Premiere at Carnegie Hall

Published: August 18, 2026

Razom for Ukraine Announces Fourth Annual Ukrainian Cultural Festival, Opening with US Premiere at Carnegie Hall

NEW YORK, NY, August 18 — Razom for Ukraine today announced the return of its Ukrainian Cultural Festival (UCF), a celebration of Ukrainian arts and culture across New York City, running October 18 through November 6, 2026. Now in its fourth year, UCF spans performing arts, cinema, theater, and literature, and continues Razom’s mission of connecting American audiences with Ukrainian voices, artists, and institutions.

The festival opens on October 18 at Carnegie Hall with the US premiere of “Steel, Violet, Rage,” a Concerto for Piano Four Hands and Orchestra by Ukrainian composer Oleh Bezborodko, believed to be the first piano four hands concerto ever written by a Ukrainian composer. The piece is inspired by a poem by Maksym Kryvtsov, a Ukrainian soldier and poet who was killed in the war shortly after writing it. The concerto will be performed by the Shelest Piano Duo alongside the Brandywine Valley Symphony Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Michael Hall, in partnership with the Alexander & Buono Foundation. A donor reception follows the performance. Tickets available at Carnegie Hall event page.

Throughout the festival, Razom Cinema partners with DCTV and QUAD Cinema to present a curated weekend of Ukrainian film programming from October 22 through 26. Highlights include the opening night screening of “Sanatorium,” directed by Gar O’Rourke, and a slate of features and documentaries exploring war, resilience, identity, and community, several developed in partnership with Ukrainian film festivals including Linoleum, Docudays, and Sunny Bunny. The cinema weekend also features a screening of the documentary “Scream of My Blood: A Gogol Bordello Story” with a special appearance by documentary subject and punk music legend Eugene Hütz.

On October 26, Dash Arts (London) presents a workshop of “The Reckoning,” a bilingual documentary style theater piece developed from verified witness testimony gathered by The Reckoning Project, ahead of its North American tour. The workshop is produced in New York in partnership with ArKtype, the original producer of the Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival.

The festival’s literary programming includes “Poet as Witness” at Poets House on October 28, featuring Ukrainian poets and soldiers Lesyk Panasiuk and Yaryna Chornohuz alongside their translators, and a program on Lesia Ukrainka as “The Modernist Playwright America Has Yet to Discover” at the New York Public Library on October 30. The event features a reading of excerpts from Ukrainka’s two renowned plays “The Blue Rose” (1896) and “Cassandra” (1908), and a panel discussion exploring what possibilities Ukrainka’s fierce and psychologically charged work offers for the contemporary American theater artists and how her plays can be reimagined today.

UCF closes on November 6 at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Recital Hall with a performance by the Kyiv Lysenko State Music Lyceum Chamber Girls Choir together with the Westchester Children’s Chorus. The former is one of Ukraine’s premier youth choral ensembles and an international competition winner with past performances in Vatican City and at the Berlin Philharmonie. Both choirs take the stage side by side for the national anthems of Ukraine and the United States, followed by their own programs.

“We invest in culture because it’s essential, not optional. Razom’s cultural work – sharing Ukrainian arts, culture and stories – helps the world understand the real Ukraine; its creativity, resilience, and humanity.” – Ania Solovei, Razom Connect Interim Director

Tickets and full programming details are available at ucfnyc.org.

Media inquiries can be directed to Hannah Goldshlack-Wolf at hannah@wildkatpr.com (+19173302046).

About Razom:

Razom for Ukraine Applauds Senate Passage of Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act, Calls on House to Act Without Delay

Published: August 7, 2026

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Razom for Ukraine Applauds Senate Passage of Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act, Calls on House to Act Without Delay

Washington, D.C., August 7, 2026 —Today, a bipartisan supermajority of Senators passed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, which targets Russia’s financial sector and puts a substantial pressure on Moscow and its enablers to end the brutal war against Ukraine. We are grateful to every Senator who supported this critical legislation.

“This marks the second piece of pro-Ukraine legislation to pass a chamber of Congress in just over two months,” said Daniel Balson, Director of Advocacy at Razom for Ukraine. “Ukraine’s battlefield successes have injected new urgency into Congress, while Putin’s relentless attacks on civilians have hardened its resolve. The House must now meet the moment by passing this bill and sending it to President Trump’s desk for signature.”

“The strong bipartisan support for this bill is a fitting tribute to Senator Lindsey Graham, who devoted years to supporting Ukraine as it bravely resisted Putin’s war machine. We are glad to see senators from both parties ready to take up the torch in the fight for freedom and democracy.”

Americans across the political spectrum have consistently supported stronger sanctions on Russia. The Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia Act answers that bipartisan demand by providing a comprehensive set of tools to weaken Russia’s economy while extending sanctions on Iran — a key military partner of the Kremlin that has also attacked U.S. troops in the Middle East.

“Putin should be under no illusion: the longer he continues his illegal war, the higher the cost he will face. We thank President Trump for publicly backing this legislation. Ukraine’s many supporters across the country now expect Congress to finish the job and make this bill law,” said Daniel Balson.

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Razom for Ukraine is a U.S. nonprofit providing medical and humanitarian aid to Ukraine and a leading advocate for continued U.S. assistance to Ukraine. For more information or to request an interview, please contact: Ostap Yarysh, Media Advisor at Razom for Ukraine ostap.yarysh@razom.org

Why the World Needs Ukrainian Books

Published: July 8, 2026

Dear friends of Razom,

This is Kateryna Kazimirova, Razom Literature Program Lead, and I want to take you with me to Kyiv, where last week of May, under skies that couldn’t decide between sirens and the heavy bloom of peonies, one of the most important literary events in the world took place.

But first, let me tell you why I’m the one writing this letter.

Growing up in Donetsk, I was fortunate to be surrounded by books, the people who wrote them, and brilliant teachers who introduced me to both. I went to study literary theory, later taught it, built a life inside Ukrainian literature, and took for granted that this world mattered beyond its own borders. Then, in 2014, Russia occupied my home and succeeded not only in seizing territory, but in imposing its fiction – about Donbas, about Ukraine, about who belonged where. I watched it happen with two kinds of grief: the obvious one, along with a quieter realization that Ukraine’s writers, the people I considered heroes, were unknown outside my world.

Why did so few people know the writers who had shaped me? How could a nation with such a rich literary tradition remain so invisible abroad? Most importantly, in light of all that happened, how are we going to change that?

For the last decade, already in Kyiv, I had been trying to do my part by running a literary journal, and creating innovative tools to promote Ukrainian culture like Chapter Ukraine. Now I have joined Razom to expand our shared mission of helping the world discover Ukrainian literature. This year, I came back to Arsenal on behalf of Razom to participate in the festival and organize a panel on one of the questions I think about most: what actually stands between Ukrainian books and anglophone readers?

An Arsenal of a Different Kind

When I call it the best literary festival in the world, this is not only my sentiment. In 2019, Book Arsenal was recognized as the world’s best literary festival of the year at the International Publishing Industry Excellence Awards organized by the London Book Fair. It has been running annually since 2012, skipping only twice: during the pandemic outbreak and the year of the full-scale invasion. It came back in 2023, grew to 35,000 visitors in 2024, and, like Ukraine, is stronger every year since.

Why “Arsenal”? The building where the festival takes place was originally built in 1783 by imperial decree as a weapons depot – a fortress-like structure with walls six feet thick, covering nearly twenty-five acres in the heart of Kyiv. But the ground it stands on is older than that: the site was a 16th-century convent, whose most prominent patron was the mother of Hetman Ivan Mazepa – the Ukrainian leader who defied Peter I and became a lasting symbol of resistance to Russian rule. The empire demolished the convent and built an arsenal in its place. Ukrainians eventually took the arsenal back and filled it with books instead.

My own Arsenal story started in 2015, when I fled Donetsk to Kyiv and found, once again, what I had lost: a community of booklovers and cultural professionals that felt like home. In the years when I wasn’t working in culture full-time, I would take a week off work just for the festival, spending days discovering new books, listening to authors, panel discussions, and then finding friends in the garden as the evening came, reading poetry to each other and talking for hours.

This one week of the year, everyone comes, no matter where the last twelve months have scattered us. We synchronize our clocks, make plans, and simply be together. But the magnetism runs deeper. Arsenal is one of those rare places where you feel fully alive – concentrated, meaningful, part of something larger than yourself. Where the line between past and present dissolves, and you can feel the full weight of a cultural tradition that has been carried across generations and is still being carried, right now, by the people standing next to you. You listen to one of the sharpest minds alive give a talk that rearranges something in your thinking, then meet them in the coffee queue twenty minutes later and talk like old friends. Where else does that happen?

And underneath all of it is the simple act of being here. Of having made it through another year. Once you have been part of the world of Arsenal, something in you keeps returning to it, the way you return to a place that has known you at your best.

Bear Your Freedom

Each year Arsenal has a theme. This year it was Bear Your Freedom, curated by Maksym Butkevych – journalist, human rights activist, former POW, who spent 913 days in Russian captivity before being released in October 2024. Razom supports his initiative Principle of Hope, which develops materials supporting the psychological recovery of returning prisoners, and separate guidance helping soldiers understand how to preserve their lives in captivity.

His central argument: freedom and responsibility are inseparable – “siamese twins” and the greater danger is not that freedom is taken from us, but that we surrender it willingly, trading it for comfort or the illusion of stability. For Butkevych, freedom is never only about oneself, but about those beside us, the ability to build the future together and defend it together: “Perhaps this is Ukraine’s new mission today: not only to fight for freedom, but to help the world rediscover its value.”

One more topic within this theme was the fragility of heroism. Writers and soldiers Artem Chapeye and Artur Dron put it plainly: a hero is not someone without fear or exhaustion, but someone who keeps moving despite both. As Dron said, society creates “bronze” heroes out of convenience, so everyone else can watch from the sidelines and feel absolved. The real call is to see the person behind the symbol, recognize their needs, and act – because bearing freedom together means no one should carry it alone.

On the day of our panel, I arrived early, before the festival opened to the public. Walking through one of the pavilions, I came across the room full of military chaplains – still, present, sacred. Later that day, one of them presented a new book titled Care for the Spirit. And then, watching the main stage fill for readings by soldier-writers, and the lines snaking through the courtyard for their book signing, I realized that combatant literature is no longer a niche: it is the mainstream. It is simply the most honest account of the life Ukrainians are living now.

The Highest Form of Communication

Arsenal’s Writers’ Program, curated by writer and soldier Andriy Lyubka, opened with a deceptively simple question: What do we actually know about our neighbors? We share borders with Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, and can barely name five of their writers. When knowledge is scarce, stereotypes fill the gap. For a country that cannot afford adversaries on two fronts, genuine neighborliness is a question of survival.

Among the writers on the Arsenal main stage was Polish Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk, who argued that Central European identity is defined not by stable borders but by their absence – by fluidity, fragmentation, a world that keeps shifting underfoot. It is precisely this instability, she said, that produces writers who cannot rely on realism alone, and it is this shared inheritance that connects Ukraine to its neighbors more deeply than any political agreement.

Tokarczuk had something important to say about the power of literature itself: humans are narrative creatures who understand the world through stories, not facts. Literature is the highest form of communication: it reaches where information cannot, using metaphor and symbol to convey truths. In times of war and propaganda, literature is the clean breath; it forces a reckoning with complexity, protects identity the way a magnetic field protects against external force. She reminded the audience that Poland survived 123 years without a state, through language and culture alone.

Fieldwork in Ukrainian Sex

Among 240 events that Arsenal hosted across four days were poetry readings that moved to bomb shelters mid-session, a Theatre of Veterans, workshops, music, slam poetry, mile-long signing queues, and in the evenings wild dancing under folk and electronic beats. But one of the most attended was a conversation marking the 30th anniversary of Oksana Zabuzhko’s Fieldwork in Ukrainian Sex with Maria Genkin, Razom’s Board Co-Chair, among the speakers.

The book follows a Ukrainian woman writer navigating love, identity, and the weight of post-Soviet womanhood. Publishers at the time genuinely doubted that a Ukrainian-language novel could sell. But it became the first national bestseller of its kind, went through at least seventeen editions, 25 languages, and opened the doors for an entire generation of writers.

Thirty years later, teenage girls return to it as a psychotherapeutic text. Elif Batuman cited it as the book that made her reconsider Russian literature’s colonial hold. Zabuzhko said she no longer owns it – it has become something collective. And in the context of the war, the conversation kept returning to one idea: when a culture is known, and its books are read, a nation becomes harder to kill.

Three Percent Ceiling: Razom’s Way to Break It

Despite the impact of books like Zabuzhko’s across borders, did you know that only 3% of books published in the American market are translated from other languages, all other languages combined? The anglophone market is the hardest literary market in the world to break into. And yet it is the one that matters most for global visibility.

That is why at Book Arsenal, Razom brought together on the main stage a panel of people who know this market from the inside. Emma Shercliffe – a UK literary agent who has sold more Ukrainian titles to British and American publishers than almost anyone – opened by dispelling a persistent myth: people are not tired of the Ukrainian theme. One of her Ukrainian authors is currently her best-selling title. The appetite is real, extending well beyond war narratives into fiction, history, culture. Emma was unambiguous about the quality: the level of intellectual thought in Ukrainian literature, she said, is deeply stimulating, and Ukraine’s top authors hold their own against any international writers. Visibility is no longer the main problem. What remains: the near-absence of agents, the need to be strategic about which publishers you sell rights to, and a grant system that remains practically inaccessible to the larger publishers who could do the most with a book.

Maria Genkin added a pattern she keeps seeing: selling rights to the wrong American publishers – a major new novel going to an academic press that will never invest in promotion. The book comes out, nobody notices, and everyone concludes Ukrainian literature doesn’t sell. Her point was direct: do not sell global rights to a single publisher. Some of those publishers aren’t even eligible for major literary awards, which means no long or shortlisting, no reviews, no bookstore purchases, no second life for the book. Razom’s role is to act as a mediator, helping authors and publishers navigate this complicated market.

Andriy Kurkov, Ukraine’s most internationally bestselling author, drew the distinction that the UK and US markets operate by entirely different rules. The American market is its own thing – more closed, slower to warm up. Kurkov knew this firsthand: his first attempt in 2001 failed not because of the books, but because the publisher did nothing. If a publisher isn’t investing in promotion, books don’t reach shelves. If books don’t reach shelves, nobody finds them. The logic is circular and self-defeating, and it has nothing to do with the quality of the writing. His second attempt in 2018 worked: “The goal is always to arrive and stay. And if you’ve got in and stayed, that’s already a great victory.”

I concluded with what I see as the core problem: the absence of a self-sustaining infrastructure where every part of the system does its job. The real question is delivery: how does a great Ukrainian book actually get onto bookstore and library shelves, and stay there? Here is what Razom is doing about it. We invest in translators as a profession through mentorships, the new Razom Translation Award, and partnerships with leading literary translation institutions in the US and UK. We offer translation grants that are accessible to larger publishers precisely because we don’t require a book to be completed and published within a single year – the constraint that makes most grant programs unworkable for major presses. To date, we have supported eight books; several high-profile titles are coming from major presses in 2027 that would not exist without Razom’s involvement. We also support promotion and, this year, editing – unique among grant programs. And through Chapter Ukraine, we build communities of readers in libraries, universities, and grassroots organizations who advocate for Ukrainian books from the ground up.

Every literary tradition that reached the world stage arrived with a new artistry and language for it – one that captured a reality the world hadn’t yet found words for. The stream eventually broke through its geographical borders and became universal. Ukrainian literature has already formed that language: raw honesty, fragile heroism, self-reliance, a direct way of looking at what most literature looks away from. The current is moving. Is the American reader ready to meet it?

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P.S. As I am finishing this letter, the news came in: Russia struck the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra – the 11th-century cathedral that is a UNESCO World Heritage site – setting its roof on fire while monks and rescue workers formed human chains to save the icons. As firefighters were still battling the blaze, a second strike hit Mystetskyi Arsenal, the building where Book Arsenal takes place. The Dovzhenko National Film Studio was also hit, destroying Ukraine’s largest and oldest costume collection, 100,000 garments, gone. Once again, Russian aggression deliberately strikes Ukraine’s cultural heritage.

Patriot Production License for Ukraine Will Save Lives and Help End the War

Published: July 8, 2026

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Razom for Ukraine: Patriot Production License for Ukraine Will Save Lives and Help End the War

Washington, D.C., July 8, 2026 — Today, President Trump announced that the United States will authorize licensed production of Patriot interceptors in Ukraine—a landmark decision that will save lives, strengthen U.S. interests, and help bring Russia’s war to an end.

“President Trump stands on the right side of history. He stands with the winners. And this is a win-win for both Ukraine and the United States,” said Melinda Haring, Senior Advisor at Razom for Ukraine. “Licensed production will allow Ukraine to better defend its people without drawing down existing U.S. stockpiles.”

“Russia is losing on the battlefield and sustaining increasingly humiliating deep strikes against the oil infrastructure that fuels its war machine. Putin’s remaining tool is terror: ballistic missile strikes on Ukrainian cities designed to kill civilians and break the country’s will.”

While producing Patriots would give Ukraine a strong shield for tomorrow, it also needs ammunition for tonight. A sustained, uninterrupted flow of interceptors through existing programs is crucial to fulfill an urgent need for air defense to protect civilians in Ukraine as Russia attacks their homes on a daily basis.

“Ukrainians are winners. They have repeatedly demonstrated their ingenuity and ability to rapidly master advanced technologies under wartime conditions. We urge President Trump and his administration to immediately implement the licensing agreement, and maintain the flow of existing Patriot interceptors to Ukraine while domestic production ramps up,” said Melinda Haring.

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