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Good morning to readers, Kyiv remains in Ukrainian hands.

@terrelljstarr is filling in for me at Counteroffensive.news while we are traveling.

Today we have a story on Alice, and her perspective as a Black woman growing up in Ukraine.
Alice Zhuravel loves being Black, but her little Afro as a young child gave her the fits.

Born in 1995, Ukraine was four years removed from the fall of the USSR and hair care products designed for Black girls hadn’t made their way to her native Kharkiv.
Zhuravel’s mom did the best she could to style it, but the results were always terrible.

“This experience with my hair was the main reason I didn’t identify myself as absolutely Ukrainian.”
“I wasn't white and I wanted to be white and wanted to have straight hair like everyone around me.”

Today’s story is about Alice’s self-discovery, her blackness, and the relationship with her Ukrainian citizenship.

Counteroffensive.news
It took years of self-discovery to appreciate that she was unique. It was around the age of 15 that she started feeling good about being Black.
Music played, perhaps, the most critical positive reinforcement when she was unsure of how to view the Black child staring back at her in the mirror.

“Hip hop helped me to survive these periods…because it helped me reflect a lot about my own identification.”
She founded Tozhsamist last year, a social initiative that features Ukrainians telling their stories about their culture and decouple it from Kremlin disinformation campaigns.

https://www.tozhsamist.com
The initiative gives a platform to Ukrainians who can tell their own truth about the war and life here in general.
So she started interviewing Ukrainians of Korean, Crimean Tatar and other ethnic backgrounds.
To read more about Zhuravel’s work, and her experience growing up in Ukraine, read the full story here: counteroffensive.news
Let's get into some news.

We hope no one was planning a Crimean trip anytime soon… the now-confirmed Ukrainian strike on the Kerch Bridge by naval drones has caused havoc amongst Russian logistics and traffic in the area.

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/07/16/europe/russia-crimea-bridge-intl-hnk/index.html
Seemingly in response, and after the Russians pulled out of the Black Sea Grain Deal, Russia attacked the Ukrainian port town Odesa for the second night in a row - Russia seemed to be sending a message about continuing grain exports without their consent.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/7/19/russia-attacks-ukraines-odesa-explosions-reported-in-sevastopol
Ukrainian forces are continuing a grueling offensive against firmly entrenched Russian forces in the east.
"We'd like to get very fast results, but in reality it's practically impossible," says Ukrainian General Oleksandr Syrskyi.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66225691
Screen shot of a Mastodon post with the text:
"Ukrainians are trying for now to save the few they do have by doing the job manually. Sapper units — sometimes a group of just four people — will often wait for twilight to clear paths, as they are too visible in the daylight and can be seen through night-vision devices in the dark.

Walking with a metal detector is unrealistic, sappers said, because they are too visible. So they crawl, relying on their vision to spot mines."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/15/ukraine-war-russia-mines-counteroffensive/

#Ukraine #Russia #War 
#News